NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
Bethesda, Maryland
V
v
EXPLANATIONS.
//Jo
EXPLANATIONS
A SEQUEL TO - /
VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY
OF CREATION."
BY THE AUTHOR OF THAT WORK.
8r Sir Richard Wr*M
NEW YORK:
WILEY & PUTNAM, 16] BROADWAY.
1846.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Design of the Vestiges explained 2
Proper Position of the Nebular Hypothesis in the Argument. . 3
Imputed Failure of the Hypothesis from the Earl of Rosse's
discoveries, denied 6
Experiments illustrating and confirming the Hypothesis by
Professor Plateau 10
Objection from the retrogression of Uranus's Satellites consi-
dered 13
Objection respecting the convergence of atoms to a central
nucleus, answered 14
The Nebular Hypothesis not a supersession of Deity, but only a
description of his mode of working 16
Quetelet's inquiries, establishing law in mental operations. ... 17
Limits of the syslem being under law, the whole is probably so 18
Question of the Origin of Organic nature 19
Geology proves it to have observed a progress in time 21
Objections respecting this progress 22
Lower Silurian Fossils 23
Upper Silurian Fossils 33
Old Red Sandstone 34
Carboniferous System 42
Permian System 45
Outline of the Genetic Plan of the Animal Kingdom 49
Bearing of this Plan on the Arguments of Objectors 53
Reptiles of the Muschelkalk, Lias, &c 58
Objections as to first Footmarks of Birds 60
Vi CONTENTS.
PAGE
Objections as to Earliest Mammalia 62
Tertiary Formation 64
Opinions of Cuvier and Agassiz 70
Apology of Mr. Sedgwick for Over- Ardent Generalizations. . . 71
Physiological Objections of Dr. Clark, of Cambridge 73
Views of others respecting Embryotic Development 75
Germs not alleged to be identical 77
Transmutation of Plants 78
Species a Term, not a Fact 80
Instances of Transmutation 81
Transmutation does not imply extinction of Elder Species. ... 83
The Broomfield Experiment 84
Proof of Aboriginal Life in the present era not essential to the
theory of Organic Creation by Law 86
The Opposite Theory characterized 88
Views of Dr. Whewell, and objections to them 90
Views of the Edinburgh Reviewer — these analyzed 95
Views of Professor Agassiz 99
Views of Sir John Herschel 100
Support to Theory of Law from Rev. Dr. Pye Smith and Black-
wood's Magazine 101
Mr. Stuart Mill on Universal Causation 102
Present State of Opinion on the Origin of Organic Nature
examined 105
Animals have not come immediately on the occurrence of proper
conditions 207
Great number of distinct Floras 107
Supposed Formation of New Species, as upheld by Professor
Owen, &c, inadmissible 108
Opinions of Professor Pictet on Peculiarity of Species in each
formation HO
Time the true key to difficulties arising from apparent per-
manency of species HI
Vast spaces of time involved in the Geological record 112
Zoology of Galapagos Islands, an instance of comparatively re-
cent development 114
Author's theory supported by facts connected with the distri-
bution of plants 117
CONTENTS. Vii
PAGE
Whence the iirst impulse to vitality? 119
The Vestiges— its object purely scientific— defended on this
ground m
Ungenerous policy of Geological Objectors 120
Opposition of the Scientific Class 123
Estimate of this Opposition 124
Utility of Hypotheses 127
Bearing of the new doctrine on Human Interests 129
Its Moral Results 130
Consolations and Encouragements offered by it 132
Appendix— Letters of Mr. Weekes on Aboriginal Production of
Insects 134
EXPLANATIONS.
When the work to which this may be regarded as a sup-
plement was published, my design was not only to be per-
sonally removed from all praise or censure which it might
evoke, but to write no more upon the subject. I said to
myself, Let this book go forth to be received as truth, or
to provoke others to a controversy which may result in
establishing or overthrowing it ; but be my task now
ended. I did not then reflect that, even though written by
one better informed or more skilled in argument than I
can pretend to be, it might leave the subject in such a
condition that the author should have to regret seeing it
in a great measure misapprehended in its general scope,
and also so much excepted to, justly and unjustly, on par-
ticular points, that ordinary readers might be ready to
suppose its whole indications disproved. Had I bethought
me of such possible results, I might have announced, from
the beginning, my readiness to enter upon such explana-
tions of points objected to, and such reinforcements of the
general argument, as might promise to be serviceable.
And this would have seemed the more necessary, in as far
as it may be expected that there are many points in a new
and startling hypothesis which no one can be so well
qualified to clear up and strengthen as its author. I might
2
3
EXPLANATIONS'.
have felt, at the same time, that a new adventure, for
whatever purpose, in the same field, was hazardous, with
regard to any favorable impression previously produced ;
yet such an objection would, again, have been at once
overruled, seeing that public favor and disfavor were alike
beyond the regard of an author who bore no bodily shape
in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, and was likely to
remain for ever unknown. Such reflections now occur to
me, and I am consequently induced to take up the pen for
the purpose of endeavoring to make good what is deficient,
and reasserting and confirming whatever has been un-
justly challenged in my book. In doing so, I shall study
to direct attention solely to fact and argument, or what
appear as such, overlooking the uncivil expressions which
the work has drawn forth in various quarters, and which,
of course, can only be a discredit to their authors.
I must start with a more explicit statement of the gene-
ral argument of the Vestiges, for this has been extensively
misunderstood. The book is not primarily designed, as
many have intimated in their criticisms, and as the title
might be thought partly to imply, to establish a new theory
respecting the origin of animated nature ; nor are the
chief arguments directed to that point. The object is one
to which the idea of an organic creation in the manner of
natural law is only subordinate and ministrative, as like-
wise are the nebular hypothesis and the doctrine of a fixed
natural order in mind and morals. This purpose is to
show that the whole revelation of the works of God pre-
sented to our senses and reason is a system based in what
we are compelled, for want of a better term, to call law ;
by which, however, is not meant a system independent or
exclusive of Deity, but one which only proposes a certain
EXPLANATIONS.
3
mode of his working. The nature and bearing of this doc-
trine will be afterwards adverted to ; let me, meanwhile,
observe, that it has long been pointed to by science, though
hardly anywhere broadly and fully contemplated. And
this was scarcely to be wondered at, since, while the whole
physical arrangements of the universe were placed under
taw by the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, there was
still such a mysterious conception of the origin of organic
nature, and of the character of our own fitful being, that
men were almost forced to make at least large exceptions
from any proposed plan of universal order. What makes
the case now somewhat different is, that of late years we
have attained much additional knowledge of nature, point-
ing in the same direction as the physical arrangements of
the world. The time seems to have come when it is pro-
per to enter into a re-examination of the whole subject, in
order to ascertain whether, in what we actually know,
there is most evidence in favor of an entire or a partial
system of fixed order. When led to make this inquiry for
myself, I soon became convinced that the idea of any ex-
ception to the plan of law stood upon a narrow, and con-
stantly narrowing foundation, depending, indeed, on a few
difficulties or obscurities, rather than objections, which
were certain soon to be swept away by the advancing tide
of knowledge. It appeared, at the same time, that there
was a want in the state of philosophy amongst us, of an
impulse in the direction of the consideration of this theory,
so as to bring its difficulties the sooner to a bearing in the
one way or the other ; and hence it was that I presumed
to enter the field.
My starting point was a statement of the arrangements
of the bodies of space, with a hypothesis respecting the
4
EXPLANATIONS.
mode in which those arrangements had been effected. It
is a mistake to suppose this (nebular) hypothesis essential,
as the basis of the entire system of nature developed in
my book. That basis lies in the material laws found to
prevail throughout the universe, which explain why the
masses of space are globular ; why planets revolve round
suns in elliptical orbits ; how their rates of speed are high
in proportion to their nearness to the centre of attraction ;
and so forth. In these laws arises the first powerful pre-
sumption that the formation and arrangements of the celes-
tial bodies were brought about by the Divine will, acting
in the manner of a freed order or law, instead of any mode
which we conceive of as more arbitrary. It is a presump-
tion which an enlightened mind is altogether unable to re-
sist, when it sees that precisely similar effects are every
day produced by law on a small scale, as when a drop of
water spherifies, when the revolving hoop bulges out in the
plane of its equator, and the sling, swung round in the
hand, increases in speed as the string is shortened. The
philosopher, on observing these phenomena, and finding
incontestable proof that they are precisely of the same
nature as those attending the formation and arrangement
of worlds, learns his first great lesson — that the natural
laws work on the minutest and the grandest scale indiffer-
ently ; that, in fact, there is no such thing as great and
small in nature, but world spaces are as a hair-breadth,
and a thousand years as one day. Having thus all but
demonstration that the spheres were formed and arranged
by natural law, the nebular hypothesis becomes important,
as shadowing forth the process by which matter was so
transformed from a previous condition, but it is nothing
more ; and, though it were utterly disproved, the evidence
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
5
which we previously possessed that physical creation, so
to speak, was effected by means of, or in the manner of
law, would remain exactly as it was. We should only
be left in the dark with regard to the previous condition of
matter, and the steps of the process by which it acquired
its present forms.
It would nevertheless strengthen the presumption, and,
indeed, place it near to ascertained truths, if we were to
obtain strong evidence for what has hitherto been called
the nebular hypothesis. The evidence for it is sketched
in the Vestiges : it is exhibited with greater clearness, and
in elegant and impressive language, in Professor Nichol's
Views of the Architecture of the Heavens. The position
held by this hypothesis in the philosophical world when my
book was written, is shown, with tolerable distinctness, in
the Edinburgh Review for 1838, where it is spoken of in the
following general terms : — " These views of the origin
and destiny of the various system of worlds which fill the
immensity of space, break upon the mind with all the inte-
rest of novelty, and all the brightness of truth. Appealing
to our imagination by their grandeur, and to our reason by
the severe jmnciples on which they rest, the mind feels as if
a revelation had been vouchsafed to it of the past and
future history of the universe." It may also be remarked
that this writer considered the hypothesis as " confirming,
rather than opposing the Mosaic cosmogony, whether alle-
gorically or literally interpreted." With this testimony to
the mathematical expositions of MM. La Place and Comte,
I rest content, as the expositions themselves would be un-
suitable in a popular treatise. But the hypothesis has been
favorably entertained in many authoritative quarters, dur-
ing the last few years, and probably would have continued
0
EXPLANATIONS.
to be so, if no attempt had been made to enforce by it a
system of nature on the principle of universal order.
The chief objection taken to the theory is, that the ex-
istence of nebulous matter in the heavens is disproved by
the discoveries made by the Earl of Rosse's telescope.
By this wondrous tube, we are told, it is shown to be " an
unwarrantable assumption that there are in the heavenly
spaces any masses of matter different from solid bodies
composing planetary systems."* The nebulae, in short,
are said to be now shown as clusters of stars, rendered
apparently nebulous only by the vast distance at which
they are placed. There is often seen a greater vehemence
and rashness in objecting to, than in presenting hypothe-
ses ; and we appear to have here an instance of such hasty
counter-generalization. The fact is, that the nebulae were
always understood to be of two kinds : 1, nebulae which
were only distant clusters, and which yielded, one after
another, to the resolving powers of telescopes, as these
powers were increased ; 2, nebulae comparatively near,
which no increase of telescopic power affected. Two
classes of objects wholly different were, from their partial
resemblance, recognized by one name, and hence the con-
fusion which has arisen upon the subject. The resolution
of a great quantity of the first kind of nebulae by Lord
Rosse's telescope was of course expected, and it is a fact,
though in itself interesting, of no consequence to the ne-
bular hypothesis. It will only be in the event of the second
class being also resolved, and its being thus shown that
there is only one class of nebulae, that the hypothesis will
suffer. Such, at least, I conclude to be the sense of a
* North British Review, iii.,477.
NEBUi.AU HYPOTHESIS.
7
passage which I take leave to transfer, in an abridged
form, from a recent edition of Professor Nichol's work.
" I. By far the greater number of the milky streaks, or spots,
whose places have hitherto been recorded, lie at the outermost, or
nearly at the outermost boundary of the sphere previously reached
by our telescopes ; and in this case there is no certain principle on
the ground upon which a pure nebula can be distinguished from a
cluster so remote that only the general or fused light of its myriads
of constituent orbs can be seen. Sometimes, — resting on a pecu-
liarity of form or other characteristic, — the astronomer may venture
a guess that such an object is probably a firmament; as, indeed, I
was bold enough to do in former editions of this work with regard
to several which have since been resolved ; but, in the main, he
can tell little concerning them, or have any other belief, than that,
as with similar masses near him, a great, probably the greater num-
ber, are true clusters, grand arrangements of stars, incredibly re-
mote, but resembling in all things our own home galaxy. Now,
the application to such objects of a new and enlarged power of
vision, could be attended only by one result — magnificent, but far
from unexpected : and it is here that the six-feet mirror has
achieved its earliest triumphs. Under its piercing glance, great
numbers of the milky speck3 have unfolded their starry constitu-
ents ; some of these, which previously were almost unresolved,
shining with a lustre equivalent to that of our brightest orbs to the
naked eye. How far it will go with its resolving power has not
yet been ascertained ; but I perceive that Sir James South has
given his authority that some spots examined by it continue in-
tractable.
"II. The influence of the new discoveries either to impair or
strengthen the foundations of the nebular hypothesis, must clearly
be looked for among their bearings on less remote and ambiguous
objects. Now, the new aspects of these may lead us to question
our former opinions as to the existence of the supposed filmy self-
luminous masses, — or they may throw doubt on the reality of those
forms according to which we have arranged them, and which seem
to indicate the steps of a stupendous progress.
" 1. Astronomers have never rested their belief in the reality
8
EXPLANATIONS.
and wide diffusion of the nebulous matter, on the objects referred
to in the first paragraph ; but on others, much within the range of
our previous vision. In so far as we have hitherto understood the
nature of clusters, the telescopic power required to resolve them is
never very much higher than that which first descries them as dim
milky spots. But. there are many most remarkable objects which,
in this essential feature, are wholly contrasted with clusters. For
instance, the nebula in Orion, as I have fully shown in the text, is
visible to the naked eye, as also is the gorgeous one in Andromeda;
while the largest instrument heretofore turned to them has given
no intimation that their light is stellar, but rather the contrary ;
although small stars are found buried amidst their mass. Now, if
Lord Rosse's telescope resolves these, and others with similar attri-
butes, such as some of the streaks among the following plates, we
shall thereby be informed that we have generalized too hastily from
the character of known firmaments,— that schemes of stellar being
exist, infinitely more strange and varied than we had ventured to
suppose,— and certainly we shall then hesitate in averring further,
concerning the existence or at least the diffusion of the purely
nebulous modification of matter.
" 2. Lord Rosse's telescope may also, as I have said, disprove
the reality of our arrangement of the forms of the nebulae as steps
of a progression. And in regard of this question, there seem two
classes of objects meriting attention.
" First, I shall refer to the nebulous stars properly so called, or
to that form in which the diffused matter has reached the condition
of almost pure fixed stars. Now, of these objects there are two
distinct sets, presenting at first to the telescope very much the
same appearance, but in regard of which our knowledge is very
different. It will readily be conceived that a distant cluster, with
strong concentration about the centre of its figure, must, to the
telescope which first descries it, look like a star with a halo around
it. When a higher power is applied, that central star, however,
will appear as a disc, and to a still higher power the cluster will
be revealed. A very great number of what are called nebulous
stars, are doubtless of this class ; and we have hitherto had no
means of accurately ascertaining the fact, just because our largest
telescopes were required to descry them ; but there are multitudes
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
9
of others — the true ' photospheres ' — quite of a different descrip-
tion. Many of these are easily seen as fixed stars with haloes of
different sizes diminishing to the mere ' bur and under the great-
est power as yet applied, the apparent central star never expands
into a disc, or departs from the stellar character. It is by its effect
on these that the new instrument will at all bear on this portion of
the nebular hypothesis.
" Secondly, The foregoing being our grounds of belief in the
existence of nebulae — first, in a diffused or chaotic state, and again
in a condition proximate to pure stars ; the only remaining point
has reference to nebulae in an intermediate state, — when the round-
ish masses seem to have begun a process of organization or concen-
tration, and carried it onwards through several stages : a state to
which we have every variety of analogon in the various forms and
densities of cometic nuclei. Sir William Herschel certainly was
not ignorant that round or spherical clusters abound in the skies,
which, when first seen, present all the appearances of such nebulae
— nay, he grounded on the fact of their approximate sphericity and
varying degrees of concentration, some of the boldest and most
engrossing of his conjectures ; nor would he have doubted that
multitudes which, even to his instruments, seemed only general
lights, would, in after times, be resolved ; but here, as before, the
gist of the question is not, can you resolve round nebula? never re-
solved before ; but can you resolve such as, quite within the range
of former vision, have continued intractable under the scrutiny of
powers which, judging from the average of our experience, must
surpass what ought to have resolved them ?
" Such are my views as to the present condition of this impor-
tant question ; and if they are correct, it will appear that, not-
withstanding the resolutions achieved by the new instruments, they
are, as yet, quite as likely — by accumulating new objects belonging
to the three foregoing classes, and by more surely and distinctly
establishing their characteristic features— to strengthen, as to in-
validate the grounds of the nebular hypothesis. Eagerly, but pa-
tiently, let us watch the approaching revelations."
Various minor objections have been presented to the
nebular hypothesis ; but, before adverting to any of them,
2*
10
EXPLANATIONS.
I may give a brief abstract of certain recent experiments,
by which it has been remarkably illustrated. Here it is
peculiarly important to bear in mind, that the phenomena
of nature are, if I may so speak, indifferent to the scale
on which they act. The dew-drop is, in physics, the pic-
ture of a world. Remembering this, we are prepared in
some measure, to hear of a Belgian professor imitating
the supposed formation and arrangement, of a solar sys-
tem, in some of its most essential particulars, on the table
of a lecture-room ! The experiments were first conducted
by Professor Plateau of Ghent, and afterwards repeated
by our own Dr. Faraday.
The following abstract of Professor Plateau's experi-
ments is also presented in the fifth edition of the Vestiges.
Its being repeated here is, that it may meet the eyes of
many who are not likely to see any edition of that work
besides those from which it is absent :
Placing a mixture of water and alcohol in a glass box,
and therein a small quantity of olive oil, of density pre-
cisely equal to the mixture, we have in the latter a liquid
mass relieved from the operation of gravity, and free to take
the exterior form given by the forces which may act upon
it. In point of fact, the oil instantly takes a globular
form by virtue of molecular attraction. A vertical axis
being introduced through the box, with a small disc upon
it, so arranged that its centre is coincident with the centre
of the globe of oil, we turn the axis at a slow rate, and
thus set the oil sphere into rotation. " We then presently
see the sphere flatten at its poles and swell out at its equator,
and we thus realize, on a small scale, an effect which is
admitted to have taken place in the planets." The spheri-
fying forces are of different natures, that of molecular
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
11
attraction in the case of the oil, and of universa attrac-
tion in that of the planet, but the results are " analogous,
if not identical." Quickening the rotation makes the
figure more oblately spheroidal. When it comes to be so
quick as two or three turns in a second, "the liquid
sphere first takes rapidly its maximum of flattening, then
becomes hollow above and belosv, around the axis of rota-
tion, stretching out continually in a horizontal direction,
and finally, abandoning the disc, is transformed into a per-
fect/// regular ring." At first this remains connected with
the disc by a thin pellicle of oil ; but on the disc being
stopped this breaks and disappears, and the ring becomes
completely disengaged. The only observable difference
between the latter and the ring of Saturn is, that it is
rounded, instead of being flattened ; but this is accounted
for in a satisfactory way.
A little after the stoppage of the rotatory motion of the
disc, the ring of oil, losing its own motion, gathers once
more into a sphere. If, however, a smaller disc be used,
and its rotation continued after the separation of the ring,
rotatory motion and centrifugal force will be generated in
the alcoholic fluid, and the oil ring, thus prevented from
returning into the globular form, divides itself into " several
isolated masses, each of which immediately takes the globular
form.''' These are " almost always seen to assume, at the
instant of their formation, a movement of rotation upon them-
selves— a movement which constantly takes place in the
same direction as that of the ring. Moreover, as the ring, at
the instant of its rupture, had still a remainder of velocity,
the spheres to which it has given birth tend to fly off at a
tangent ; but as, on the other side, the disc, turning in the alco-
holic liquor, has impressed on this a movement of rotation, the
13
EXPLANATIONS.
spheres are especially carried along by this last movement,
and revolve for some time round the disc. Those which
revolve at the same time upon themselves, consequently,
then present the curious spectacle of planets revolving at the
same time on themselves and in their orbits. Finally,
another very curious effect is also manifested in these cir-
cumstances : besides three or four large spheres into which
the ring revolves itself, there are almost always produced
one or two very small ones, which may thus be compared
to satellites. The experiment which we have thus des-
cribed presents, as we see, an image in miniature of the
formation of the planets, according to the hypothesis of
Laplace, by the rupture of the cosmical rings attributable
to the condensation of the solar atmosphere."*
Such illustrations certainly tend to take from the nebular
cosmogony the character of a " splendid vision," which
one of my critics has applied to it. I may here also
remind the reader that there are other grounds for this
hypothesis, besides observations on the nebulae. Overlook-
ing the zodiacal light, which has been thought a residuum
of the nebulous fluid of our system, we find geology taking
us back towards a state of our globe which cannot other-
wise be explained. It was clearly at one time in a state
of igneous fluidity, — the state in which its oblately sphe-
roidal form was assumed under the law of centrifugal
force. Since then it has cooled, at least in the exterior
crust. We thus have it passing through a chemical pro-
cess attended by diminishing heat. Whence the heat at
first, if not from the causes indicated in the nebular
* Dr. Plateau on the Phenomena presented by a free Liquid
Mass withdrawn from the action of gravity. Taylor's Scientific
Memoirs. November, 1844.
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
13
hypothesis ? But this is not all. In looking back along
the steps of such a process, we have no limit imposed.
There is nothing to call for our stopping till we reach one
of those extreme temperatures which would vaporize the
solid materials ; and this gives us exactly that condition
of tilings which is implied by the nebular cosmogony.
Of particular objections it is not necessary to say much.
That there should be difficulties attending such a hypothe-
sis is only to be expected ; but where general evidence is
so strong, we should certainly be scrupulous about allow-
ing them too much weight. It is represented, for instance,
that the matter of the solar system could not, in any con-
ceivable gaseous form, fill the space comprehended by the
orbit of Uranus. If this be the case, let it be allowed as
a difficulty. It is pointed out that the planets do not
increase regularly in density from the outermost to the
innermost. Their sizes are also not in a regular pro-
gression, though the largest, generally speaking, are
towards the exterior of the system. It was not, perhaps,
to be expected, that such gradations should be observed ;
but, grant there was some reason to look for them, their
absence constitutes only another and a slight difficulty.
Then we know no law to determine the particular " stages
at which rings are formed and detached." Be it so —
although something of the kind there doubtless is, as the
distances of the planets, according to Bode's law, observe
a geometrical series of which the ratio of increase is 2.
From these objections, which cannot now be answered, let
us pass to some which can.
It has been said that a confluence of atoms towards a
central point, as presumed by the nebular hypothesis,
14
EXPLANATIONS.
would result, not in a rotation, but in a state of rest.*
According to the North British Review — " . . . Supposing
the uniformly distributed atoms to agglomerate round their
ringleader, the space left blank by the slow advance of the
atoms in radial lines converging to the nucleus, must be
a ring bounded by concentric circles, the outermost circle
being the limit of the nebulous matter not drawn to the
centre of the nascent sun. Now, as all the forces which
act upon the agglomerating particles, whether they pro-
ceed from the circumference of the undisturbed nebulous
matter, or from the gradually increasing nucleus, must
have their resultants in the radial lines above mentioned,
— there can be no cause whatever capable of giving a
rotatory motion to the mass. It must remain at rest."
Now, there can be no doubt that a confluence proceed-
ing precisely to a centre, has this result ; but this is only
an abstract truth, not an exact and absolute description of
any actual confluence of the kind. The explanation was
afforded by Professor Nichol, long before the objection was
started, and it could not be given in better language on the
present occasion : " When we reflect on the solar nebula
in the act of condensing, it appears that the act consists in
a flow or rush of the nebulous matter from all sides towards
a central region ; which is virtually equivalent, in a
mechanical point of view, to what we witness so frequently,
both on a small and large scale — the meeting and inter-
mingling of opposite gentle currents of water= Now, what
do we find on occasion of such a meeting ? HerschePs
keen glance lighted at once on this simple phenomenon,
and drew from it the secret of one of the most fertile pro-
* North British Review, No. 6. Atlas Newspaper, Aug. 30, 1845.
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
15
cesses of Nature ! In almost no case do streams meet and
intermingle, icithout occasioning, where they intermingle, a
dimple or whirlpool ; and, in fact, it is barely possible that
such a jlow of matter from opposite sides could be so nicely
balanced in any case, that the opposite momenta or floods
would neutralize each other, and produce a condition of cen-
tral rest. In this circumstance, then — in the whirlpool to
he expected where the nebulous floods meet — is the obscure
and simple germ of rotatory movement. The very act of
the condensation of the gaseous matter as it flows towards
a central district, almost necessitates the commencement
of a process, which, though slow and vague at first, has, it
will be found, the inherent power of reaching a perfect
and definite condition . . ."*
The exception presented by the satellites of Uranus to
the otherwise uniform orbitual movements of the planetary
bodies, is brought forward as a startling difficulty. f It is,
in reality, only a trifling objection, seeing that so many
other movements follow one rule, and that we may any
day be able to fix upon a cause for this exception, per-
fectly in harmony with all the associated facts. There
was once a similar difficulty in geology — strata uppermost
where they ought to have been lowermost ; but it was in
time cleared. Geologists found that there had been a fold-
ing over of the strata, so as to reverse their proper and
original positions. May we not rest in hope, that a similar
exception in astronomy may find a similar solution? I
have thrown out the hint of a possible bouleversement of the
whole of that planet's system : it has been scoffed at ; but
it is only the supposition of a greater degree of obliquity in
* Views of the Architecture of the Heavens. First edition, 1837.
t Edinburgh Review, No. 165, p. 24.
16
EXPLANATIONS.
the inclination ot the axis of the planet to the plane of its
orbit than what we find in several others. The same
causes which made the inclination of the axis of Venus
towards her orbit 75 degrees, may have turned that of
Uranus a little further along, and so reversed the position
of his poles. The admitted inclination of the axis of
Uranus towards the plane of his orbit is 79 degrees,
the greatest found in any of the planets. This implies
only the necessity for an increase of inclination to the
extent of 22 degrees, or about one-fourth of the quadrant,
in order to account for the surmised reverse arrangement.
Nor are causes for such a phenomenon far to seek. In the
revolution of the presumed nebular mass, there would be
great undulations, as I venture to say there would be found
in any similar body which we might set into a similar
rotatory motion. Such I esteem as the causes of the
departure of the planetary axes from the vertical. A
curve in the outermost portion, amounting to a fold — like
the curl of a high wave — would cause the bouleversement
of Uranus, and the consequent (apparent) retrogression of
his satellites.
It appears then, that, overlooking a few minor unex-
plained difficulties, the objections to the nebular hypothesis
are not formidable to it. It approaches the region of ascer-
tained truths, and may reasonably be held as a strong cor-
roboration of what first appears from the material laws of
the universe, that the whole Uranographical arrangements
were effected in the manner of natural law. It is, how-
ever, altogether a mistake to regard this conclusion, as far
as it is one, as equivalent to a superseding of Deity in the
history of creation. It proposes nothing beyond a view of
the mode in which the Divine Will has been pleased to
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 17
act, in this first and most important of its works. The
formation of worlds and their arrangement now appear but
as steps in a Historical Progress, for matter is necessarily
presumed to have existed before in a different form. By
what means and under what circumstances creation, in the
true sense of the word, took place, — that is, how existence
was given to the matter which we suppose to have been
capable of such evolutions — no one can as yet tell ; we
only are sure, if any trust can be placed in the laws of our
minds, that it had a Cause, or an Author. Leaving such
an inquiry as one, in which we have not, at present, ground
for a single step, it is surely a great gratification that we
can at least trace the operations of the Great First Cause,
from a condition of matter anterior to its present forms, and
learn with certainty that these operations were in no way
arbitrary or capricious, that they were not single and de-
tached phenomena, but the result of principles flowing from
the Eternal and Immutable, and which prevailed over all
the realms of Infinity at once.
We have fixed mechanical laws at one end of the sys-
tem of nature. If we turn to the mind and morals of man,
we find that we have equally fixed laws at the other.
The human being, a mystery considered as an individual,
becomes a simple natural phenomenon when taken in the
mass, for a regularity is observed in every peculiarity of
our constitution and every form of thought and deed of
which we are capable, when we only extend our view
over a sufficiently wide range. It is to M. Quetelet, of
Brussels, that we are indebted for the first satisfactory ex-
plication of this great truth : it is presented in his well-
known and very able treatise, Sur L' Homme, et le Dive-
18
EXPLANATIONS.
loppement de ses Facultes. He first shows the regularity
which presides over the births and deaths of a community,
liable to be affected in some degree by accidental circum-
stances, but fixed again when these are uniform. He then
makes it clear that the stature, weight, strength, and other
physical peculiarities of men are likewise regulated by
fixed principles of nature. Afterwards, the moral quali-
ties,— the impulses of all our various sentiments and pas-
sions,— even the tendency to yield to those temptations
which give birth to crime, — are proved to be of no less
determinate character, however impossible it may be to
predict the conduct of any single person. These are doc-
trines not to be resisted by inconsiderate prejudices. They
rest on the most powerful of all evidence, that of numbers.
If they appear to take from the personal responsibility of
individuals, it is merely an appearance, for the doctrine
immediately steps forward to show that laws, education,
and moral influences of every kind exercise an equally
determinate control over men ; so that the need for their
being called into use becomes even more palpable than
before. We are not, however, required at this moment to
argue respecting the bearing which this doctrine may have
upon human interests. What we are at present concerned
with is the simple fact, that Morals — that part of the sys-
tem of things which seemed least under natural regulation
or law — is as thoroughly ascertained to be wholly so, as the
arrangements of the heavenly bodies.
Now we have here two most remarkable truths. The
wondrous masses which people the Mighty Void are under
the control of natural law. The workings of the little
world of the human mind — the opposite extreme of the
system — are under law likewise. We have thus the cha-
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
1!)
racter of the limits of the system fixed. So far we proceed
upon solid ground. Now it has been seen that phenomena
precisely the same as the formation and arrangement of
worlds take place daily before our eyes, under the influ-
ence of the laws of matter, showing that the whole cosmo-
gony might have been effected — proving, indeed, that it
was effected — by the Divine will acting in that manner.
Having attained this point, we are called upon to remem-
ber the many appearances of unity in nature ; how, when
we take a sufficiently wide view, there is nothing discre-
pant and exceptive in it ; how a noble and affecting sim-
plicity breathes from it in every part. So reflecting, we
ask, " Can it be that, as the first and the last parts of the
system are under law, and the first (this being also the
greatest) was manifestly created in that manner, so the
whole is under law, and has been produced in that man-
ner V It is at the moment when we have arrived at this
question, that the origin of the organic world becomes a
point of importance. The sceptic of science steps in, and
says, " No ; the idea of an entire system under law, and
produced by it, here breaks down, for who can pretend to
penetrate the mysteries of vitality and organization ? and
who can sav that species have had other than a miraculous
origin V The tone in which this objection is usually
made seems to me inappropriate, considering that the ob-
jectors stand on a mere fragment of nature, and one which
the discoveries of science are every day lessening. It is but
in a nook, to which light has not yet penetrated, that the
opponents of the theory of universal order take refuge. On
coming to the consideration of the question, I am at the
very first struck by the great a priori unlikelihood that
there can have been two modes of Divine working in the
20
EXPLANATIONS.
history of nature— namely, a system of fixed order or law
in the formation of globes, and a system in any degree dif-
ferent in the peopling of these globes with plants and
animals. Laws govern both : we are left no room to doubt
that laws were the immediate means of making the first ;
is it to be readily admitted that laws did not preside at the
creation of the second also, particularly when we find that
laws equally at this moment govern and sustain both ?
Most undoubtedly, it would require very powerful evidence
to justify such an admission. And, on the other hand, it
would require very decisive counter-evidence to forbid
the conclusion that the organic creation originated in law.
How actually stands the evidence on either side ? Simply
thus : that no actual evidence has ever yet been offered to
prove that the Divine will acted otherwise than in the usual
natural order in the organic creation ; while, on the other
hand, geology and physiology exhibit lively vestiges or
traces of that mode having actually been followed. On this
narrow ground, it appears, is the great question to be de-
bated. If the opponents of the hypothesis of an organic
creation by law can bring, from these or any other sciences.,
facts which appear as powerful objections to any such con-
clusion, then it must, at the very least, be held in suspense.
If, again, the other party can show these sciences as pre-
senting far more argument for a law creation of organisms
than against it, the hypothesis must be admitted to have
the advantage. I have so presented these sciences ; the
evidence has been disputed, and some obscure points have
been largely insisted upon in objection. It is now my duty
to enter into the consideration of these objections, and see
if they are really of the importance which has been attri-
buted to them.
GEOLOGY.
21
Fifty years ago, science possessed no facts regarding the
origin of organic creatures upon earth ; as far as know-
ledge acquired through the ordinary means was concerned,
all was a blank antecedent to the first chapters of what we
usually call ancient history. Within that time, by re-
searches in the crust of the earth, we have obtained a bold
outline of the history of the globe, during what appears to
have been a vast chronology intervening between its form-
ation and the appearance of the human race upon its sur-
face. It is shown, on powerful evidence, that, during this
time, strata of various thickness were deposited in seas,
each in succession being composed of matters worn away
from the previous rocks ; volcanic agency broke up the
strata, and projected chains of mountains ; sea and land
repeatedly changed conditions ; in short, the whole of the
arrangements which we see prevailing in the earth/s crust
took place, and that most undoubtedly under the influ-
ence of natural laws which we yet see continually operat-
ing. The remains and traces of plants and animals found
in the succession of strata, show that, while these opera-
tions were going on, the earth gradually became the thea-
tre of organic being, simple forms appearing first, and more
complicated afterwards. A time when there was no life
is first seen. We then see life begin, and go on; but
whole ages elapsed before man came to crown the work
of nature. This is a wonderful revelation to have come
upon the men of our time, and one which the philosophers
of the days of Newton could never have expected to be
vouchsafed. The great fact established by it is, that the
organic creation, as we now see it, was not placed upon the
earth at once ; — it observed a progress. Now we can
imagine the Deity calling a young plant or animal into ex-
22
EXPLANATIONS.
islence instantaneously ; but we see that he does not Usu-
ally do so. The young plant and also the young animal
go through a series of conditions, advancing them from a
mere germ to the fully developed repetition of the respec-
tive parental forms. So, also, we can imagine Divine
power evoking a whole creation into being by one word ;
but we find that such had not been his mode of working
in that instance, for geology fully proves that organic cre-
ation passed through a series of stages before the highest
vegetable and animal forms appeared. Here we have the
first hint of organic creation having arisen in the manner
of natural order. The analogy does not prove identity of
causes, but it surely points very broadly to natural order
or law having been the mode of procedure in both instan-
ces.
But the question is, Does geology really show such a
progress of being ? This has been denied in some quar-
ters, and particularly in the elaborate criticism upon the
Vestiges, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review* In
reality, the whole of the geologists admit that we have
first the remains of invertebrated animals ; then with these,
fish, being the lowest of the vertebrated ; next, reptiles and
birds, which occupy higher grades ; and, finally, along
with the rest, mammifers, the highest of all ; and yet con-
troversialists will be found gravely telling their readers,
" It is not true that only the lowest forms of animal life are
found in the lowest fossil bands, and that the more com-
plicated structures are gradually developed among the
higher bands, in what we might call a natural ascending
scale the pretext for giving this unqualified contradic
* July, 1845.
t " Edinburgh Review."
LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
'J 3
tion to the above grand fact being, that when we take the
special groups of animals, as the invertebrata, the fishes,
the reptiles, &c, there are some real or apparent grounds
for denying that the low forms of these groups came before
the higher. The fallacy consists in sinking the great
broad palpable facts of the case, about which not the least
doubt anywhere exists, and giving prominence to certain
facts of far inferior magnitude, and comparatively obscure,
but in whose obscurity there is a possibility of creating a
kind of diversion. I trust to be able to show that, even in
the special groups of fossils, there is no real obstacle to the
theory of a gradual natural development of life upon our
planet.
The view which the Edinburgh critic gives of the ear-
liest stratified rocks is much the same as my own account
of them. There is a Hypozoic formation, or scries, devoid
of remains of plants and animals ; then a formation {Lower
Silurian) called in my early editions, The Clay-slate and
Grawacke system, in which we find " no animals of the
higher classes, with a regular skeleton and a backbone
only corals, encrinil.es, crustaceans, and mollusks. "Ve-
getable appearances," he says, " do not appear among the
British rocks ; but there must have been a mass of vegeta-
ble life in the ancient sea, as no fauna can appear without
a. flora to uphold it." This last inference is of little imme-
diate consequence ; but I may remark, that it coincides
with one which I ventured to make, prompted thereto by
some of the recent papers of Mr. Murchison. We here
see it sanctioned by a writer who is understood to be a
distinguished investigator of the lowest fossiliferous beds.
It is from no wish to amuse the reader, but merely as a
pleading in behalf of several of the alleged geological mis
24
EXPLANATIONS.
statements in my book, that I bring forward another dis-
tinguished reviewer of the Vestiges of Creation, (North
British Review, No. 6), taxing me with having been driven
to make this very surmise as an escape from a difficulty !
More than this : the North British Reviewer is at odds
with his Edinburgh brother, in bringing bones and teeth
of fish into the first fossiliferous formation ; grounding the
statement upon Sir Henry de la Beche's Manual, pub-
lished about eleven years ago, and contrasting with it, in
a foot-note, my remark, " Neither fishes nor any higher ver-
tebrata as yet roamed through the marine wilds." The fact
is, that this last critic — understood to be a very eminent
philosophical writer — was not aware, that since the publi-
cation of De la Beche's Manual, the lower fossiliferous rocks
had been divided into several distinct formations, in the lowest
of which, it is fully admitted, there are no vertebrata.
More than this still : a body called the Literary and Philo-
sophical Society of Liverpool had brought before them
(January, 1845) a set of letters which one of their mem-
bers had drawn, with reference to my book, from several
of the chief geologists of the day. We there find Mr.
Lyell stating upon hearsay, that I represented fish begin-
ning in the coal, and Mr. Murchison speaking of me as
beginning with zoophytes and polypiaria alone ; statements,
I need hardly say, conveying the most erroneous impres-
sions regarding the book. This, however, is not the im-
mediate point. The two gentlemen here named will be
allowed to stand in the very first rank as geologists. They
are able men, of marvellous industry, and unimpeached
zeal for science. These men, nevertheless, in the corres-
pondence to which I am pointing, give entirely opposite
views of the first fossiliferous formation. Mr. Murchison
LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
25
says, " No trace of a vertebrated animal has been found
in the lower Silurian rocks." Mr. Lyell says, " The fact
that, with the earliest type of organization, we meet with
vertebrated animals, true fish, so far from being explained
away since I affirmed it in my book, is confirmed and ex-
tended by fresh evidence." The very latest affirmation
we have on this point from Mr. Murchison — an affirmation
made after examining Silurian rocks in Russia, where they
are presented in vast extent — contains these words : " The
absence of even the lowest of the vertcbrata in the inferior
Silurian rocks, — an absence which is total, so far as can be
inferred from the researches of geologists in all parts of
the world, — gives them a true Protozoic character."*
These extracts speak for themselves. The only thing
calling for further remark, is the surprising circumstance
of this correspondence having been brought before a learned
society, as wholly and nothing else but a condemnation of
the Vestiges !\
A leading objection, with regard to the first fossiliferous
formation (Lower Silurian) is, that it does not solely pre-
sent animals of the lowest sub-kingdom, as corals and
encrinites, but also examples of the two next higher sub-
kingdoms, the articulata and mollusca, some of the latter
being of the highest order, the cephalopods. The latter
particular is what is chiefly insisted upon.
At the time when I wrote, it was understood that the
highest orders of mollusca were not found in the first fos-
* Abstract of a paper by Mr. Murchison, Report of British As-
sociation of 1844, page 54.
t See Examination of the theory contained in Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation. By the Rev. A. Hume. Liverpool,
Whitby, 1845.
8
26
EXPLANATIONS.
siliferous tocks. Professor Phillips, in 1839 (Treatise an
Geology), said, expressly, with regard to what was then
called the Clay-slate and Grawacke system, " No gastero-
pods or cephalopods are as yet mentioned in these rocks in
Britain ; and we do not feel sufficiently acquainted with
the geological age of the limestones of the Hartz, to intro-
duce any of the fossils of that argillaceous range of
mountains." So much as a justification of the view given
of the Clay-slate fossils in my first edition. Since then,
this formation, as it exists in England, has been found to
contain gasteropods and cephalopods, though not of such
high forms as afterwards appeared. I might here repeat
what was remarked in the later editions of the Vestiges,
" Even though the cephalopoda could be shown as per-
vading all the lowest fossiliferous strata, what more would
the fact denote than that, in the first seas capable of con-
taining any kind of animal life, the creative energy ad-
vanced it, in the space of one formation (no one can tell
how long a time this might be), to the highest forms possi-
ble in that element, excepting such as were of vertebrate
structure." I might add, that this was no great advance
in comparison with the whole line of the animal kingdom,
if we may take, as a criterion on this point, the analogous
progress of an embryo of the highest animals, as the por-
tion of that progress representing the organization of the
intervebrated animals is only the first month. I might here
also revert to the book for some views with respect to the
space required for such a development. According to the
plan of animated nature, to which I have made approaches
in the later editions, we have not to account for the deve-
lopment of one long line, but of many comparatively short
ones. And, as I have also remarked, there is a rapidity
LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
27
of generation amongst the lower animals which may well
suggest something like that " rush of life," which, if we
were to judge from British strata alone, would seem to
have taken place in the early seas. But, fortunately, none
of these speculative answers to the objection are required ;
for the question first arises, Does the lowest band of the
English Lower Silurians indicate, beyond all question, the
point of time at which animal life commenced upon our
planet ? Are we quite sure that cephalopoda were among
the first of all earth's living creatures? Far from it. It
has only been ascertained that certain comparatively small
cephalopods are found as far down as any other animals
of inferior organization at certain spots in Wales and
Cumberland. When we remember that, in modern seas,
certain kinds of such animals haunt special places suita-
ble for their subsistence — that we may have Crustacea and
mollusks exclusively at one place, and radiata (as corals
and zoophytes) at some other, not perhaps far distant, but
different with respect to depth or some other circumstance
— we can conceive that cephalopods may occur in the first
fossil bands in the places which have been examined in
England, and yet remains of inferior animals may be
found by themselves on the same or a lower level in some
as yet unexplored place not far off ; so that a time-interval
may there appear to allow for a progressive development.
Such seems but a reasonably cautious surmise, when we
are told by a high authority, that there are " detached
Silurian districts in England, presenting particular changes
and modifications, arising from difference of depth, and
the variety of currents, and chemical combinations in the
seas in which they were formed j" and that, " in conse-
quence of this variety of physical condition, there is a cor-
IS
EXPLANATIONS.
responding diversity in the traces of organic life in each
situation."* What, however, places the matter beyond
doubt is, that in North America, where the early stratified
rocks are even more amply developed than with us, the
highest invertebrated forms do not appear at the first. In
the earliest ascertained fossiliferous strata, the Potsdam
Sandstone, the only fossils are lingula (a brachiopodous
mollusk) and fucoids. In the next, the Calciferous Sand-
rock, are fucoidal layers, encrinital beds, and the brachio-
pods, orthis, lingula, and bellerophon, together with ortho-
cerata, these being the first examples of the cephalopoda.
And in all these cases, the fossils are few and obscure ;
they comprise no Crustacea. It is not till we ascend to a
fourth fossiliferous series, Trenton Limestone, that fossils
become abundant, or that trilobites appear. Perhaps even
this is not the most decisively adverse view which could
be derived from the American fossils, for lately there have
been found, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, strata
which, from their metamorphic character, are believed by
some native geologists to be inferior and of course anterior
to the Silurians, and these contain traces of fucoids and of
vermiform bodies called Nereites, the last being an humble
form of articulata. If this be true, it would at least add
materially to the grounds for hesitation before pronouncing
definitely, as the Edinburgh reviewer has done, on the
commencement of fossiliferous strata and the nature of the
first fossils. Here we must also remember, that in rocks
of the elder continent anterior to the Silurians, there are
limestones, held by many to be an indication of organic
* Professor Phillips, British Association, 1845. Athenaeum's
Report.
LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
29
life at the places where they are found : the chemical ex-
periments of Braconnot upon masses of these earlier rocks
gave ammoniacal and combustible products, likewise indi-
cative of the presence of organic matter : in the same
sub-silurian region, " fragments, apparently organic, and
resembling cases of infusoria," have been detected,* and
in Bohemia actual fossils have been announced. Even
dubious traces of life in sub-silurian rocks must be admit-
ted to be of importance, when we consider that they have
mostly been subjected to such a degree of heat as could
not fail to obliterate organic memorials, seeing that it has
even changed the texture of the rocks themselves. From
what Mr. Lyell saw of the Silurian rocks in America, he
finds himself called upon, in the most emphatic manner,
to warn geologists against " the hasty assumption, that in
any of these sections we have positively arrived at the lowest
stratum containing organic remains in the crust of the earth,
or have discovered the first living beings which were embed-
ded in sediment."
" A geologist," he says, " whose observations had been
confined to Switzerland, might imagine that the coal mea-
sures were the most ancient of the fossiliferous series.
When he extended his investigations to Scotland, he might
modify his views so far as to suppose that the Old Red
Sandstone marked the beginning of the rocks charged
with organic remains. He might, indeed, after a search
of many years, admit that here and there some few and
faint traces of fossils had been found in still older slates,
in Scotland ; but he might naturally conclude, that all
pre-existing fossiliferous formations must be very insignifi-
* Ansted's Geology, ii., 60.
30
EXPLANATIONS.
cant, since no pebbles containing organic remains have
yet been detected in the conglomerates of the Old Red
Sandstone. Great would be the surprise of such a theo-
rist, when he learnt that in other parts of Europe, and still
more particularly in North America, a great succession
of antecedent strata had been discovered, capable, accord-
ing to some of the ablest palaeontologists, of constituting
no less than three independent groups, each of them as
important as the ' Old Red ' or Devonian system, and as
distinguishable from each other by their organic remains.
Yet it would be consistent with methods of generalizing
not uncommon on such subjects, if he still took for granted
that in the lowest of these ' Transition' or Silurian rocks,
he had at length arrived at the much-wished-for termina-
tion of the fossiliferous series, and that nature had begun
her work precisely at the point where his retrospect hap-
pened then to terminate."*
It is exactly to such theorizers as the Edinburgh re-
viewer that his rebuke is applicable. When he asserts
the contemporaneousness of the highest mollusks with the
origin of organic life, he says — " We are describing phe-
nomena that we have seen. We have spent years of
active life among these ancient strata — looking for (and
we might say longing for) some arrangement of the ancient
fossils which might fall in with our preconceived notions
of a natural ascending scale. But we looked in vain, and
we were weak enough to bow to nature." The weakness
consisted in looking only in one little portion of the earth,
and believing it to be a criterion for all the rest. This
writer seems yet to have to learn that knowledge is to be
* Travels in North America, ii., 131.
LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
31
acquired b)' communication as well as examination. Were
a philosopher (supposing there could be such a being) to
limit his view of mankind to juvenile schools, he might
with equal rationality deny that there is any such thing in
the world as infants in arms. " We speak of what we
have seen," he might say, " and, finding no specimens of
humanity under three feet high, we are weak enough to
bow to nature and believe that babes are a mere fancy."
Even taking the English Lower Silurians as he and
others would have them taken, it still appears that these
rocks denote, generally, a low state of the animal kingdom.
It is customary for those who take opposite views, to speak
of the creatures of this period as high — " highly-organized
Crustacea and mollusca " is the usual phrase. Some, in-
cluding the Upper Silurians in their view, tell us that the
first formation presents examples of the whole of the great
divisions, the fish being held as representing the vertebrata.
Of course, this is only done through ignorance, or for the
purpose of deceiving. Where particulars are overlooked,
it is still customary to speak of the earliest fauna as one
of an elevated kind. When rigidly examined, it is not
found to be so. In the first place, it contains no fish.
There were seas supporting crustacean and molluscan life,
but utterly devoid of a class of tenants who seem able to live
in every example of that element which supports meaner
creatures. This single fact, that only invertebrated ani-
mals now lived, is surely, in itself, a strong proof that, in
the course of nature, time was necessary for the creation
of the superior creatures. And, if so, it undoubtedly is a
powerful evidence of such a theory of development as that
which I have presented. If not so, let me hear any equally
plausible reason for the great and amazing fact that seas
32
EXPLANATIONS.
were for numberless ages destitute of fish. I fix my op-
ponents down to the consideration of this fact, so that no
diversion respecting high mollusks shall avail them. But
this is not all. The Silurian is an age, as were several
subsequent ones, of only marine animals. It is now in-
contestable, from a few land-plants found in the Silurians
of America, and a fern leaf in our own, that there was dry
land : yet no trace of a land animal appears for ages after-
wards. Moreover, though we have now a pretty full de-
velopment of the first sub-kingdom, Radiata, we have but
an imperfect one of the two next — namely, the Articulata
and Mollusca. Not to speak of the utter absence of fresh-
water and land mollusks, and of such land articulata as in-
sects and spiders, we do not find any decapedous Crustacea
(crabs, &c), though these could have lived wherever other
mollusks and Crustacea could. In fact, it is a scanty and
most defective development of life ; so much so, that Mr.
Lyell calls it, par excellence, the Age of Brachiopods,
with reference to the by no means exalted bivalve shell-fish
which forms its predominant class. Such being the actual
state of the case, I must persist in describing even the
fauna of this age, which we now know was not the first, as,
generally speaking, such an humble exhibition of the animal
kingdom as we might expect, upon the development
theory, to find at an early stage of the history of organ-
ization.*
* Objectors to the development theory have, in the eagerness of
counter-theorizing, committed themselves on the subject of the
Silurian fossils, in a way which they will yet feel to be extremely
awkward. The North British Review we have seen placing even
fishes in the first fossiliferous rocks, grounding this statement upon
an authority which has been antiquated for fully eight years — avast
UPPER SILURIAN FOSSILS.
33
We now come to the Ujrper Silurians, where new spe-
cies of invertebrated animals appear, besides a few obscure
fishes. There is no appearance, according to the Edin-
burgh reviewer, of a transition from the former species to
the present — but does he know the signs by which such a
transition could be detected ? I am aware of none. He
says the new species are sharply defined — that is, strongly
distinct ; and so they may be, without any prejudice to the
transmutation theory — as far, at least, as I understand it.
And here he remarks that there are the same difficulties
in the way of this theory, " both in the grouping of each
separate system, and in the passage from one system to
another ; and that is true, whatever part of the ascending
geological series we choose to take between the lowest
formations and the highest." As he does not state the
nature of the difficulties, I cannot undertake to say what
period in the history of geology. The British Quarterly Review
is equally unfortunate. " The Author's theory," says this writer,
" requires that these animals should be the lowest in the scale.
But no argument can convert a fish, with its back-bone, and highly-
developed nervous and muscular systems, into an animal of low
organization." (!) The dogmatic allegations of the Edinburgh re-
viewer on this point are sufficiently exposed in the text. I have
only further to express my surprise at finding Dr. Whewell par-
ticipating in the mere ignorance of the first two of the above-men-
tioned journals. In the preface to a volume which he has recently
published, under the title of Indications of the Creator, he meets
my arguments with a crude and incorrect view of the fossil history,
commencing with this sentence — "Vertebrate animals do exist in
the Silurian rocks, from which the asserted law [that of develop-
ment] excludes them." The existence of a non-pisciferous form-
ation had been unknown to him. Many of the objections made to
the development theory, in obscurer quarters, rest on errors of a
similar kind.
3*
34
EXPLANATIONS.
argument or what reconstruction of my system may be
necessary to meet them. Till we are more clear, how-
ever, regarding the actual affinities of animals, I would
suppose that any judgment as to difficulties in their group-
ing in geological formations, or succession in different
formations, might well be given somewhat less dogma-
tically than they are by this writer.
The few fish-remains of the Upper Silurians may be
asssociated with the ample development of this class in the
next (Devonian or Old Red Sandstone) system. They
belong to Agassiz's two orders of placoids (these by them-
selves in the Upper Silurians) and ganoids, the former of
which are represented by our sharks and rays, the latter
by the bony pike of America and the polypterus of the
Nile. Such are the only fishes found till we come up to
the chalk formation, when the now predominant orders of
cycloids and ctenoids begin.* The Edinburgh reviewer
makes a strong point of the placoid and ganoid orders, as
unfavorable to the progressive theory. " Taking into ac-
*The North British Review presents, as a strong objection that,
" several new ctenoids, which had been found only in the carboni-
ferous system, have been discovered among the fishes brought by
Mr. Murchison from the Old Red Sandstone of Russia. Resolved
to make out his position, the author asserts," &c. This is an un-
lucky venture in opposition. The critic evidently meant it to have
a very damaging effect, in consideration that the ctenoids are osseous
fishes. The fact is, that the fishes brought home by Mr. Murchison
are not of the ctenoid order, but belong to a placoidan family called
Ctenodus. The mistakes made by this writer, in the geological
part of his paper, are of a very grave kind, yet only such as many
men of scientific eminence may be expected to make when they
venture out of their own peculiar department, and rashly under-
estimate the strength of the arguments to which they are opposed.
FOSSILS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE.
35
count," he says, " the brain, and the whole nervous, cir-
culating, and generative system, the placoids stand at the
highest point of a natural ascending scale, and the ganoids
are also very highly organized." Of certain families of
the first order, found in the Old Red Sandstone of Russia,
he says, " Let the reader bear in mind that these fishes are
among the very highest types of their class, and that we
can reason upon them with cei'tainty, because some of
them belong to families now living in our seas." He in-
stances a crestaceon — a high kind of placoid — recently
found in the Wenlock limestone, a low portion of the Upper
Silurians, and therefore near the beginning of fish. Some
of the ganoids, also, of the Old Red Sandstone make an
approach to a higher class — reptilia. Besides the usual
row of fish-teeth, they have an inner range, in which we
see the form of those organs among the sauria. It appears,
in short, according to this writer, that the farther back we
go among the fishes, we find them possessed of the higher
characters. Of the real character of all this hardy as-
sertion I shall enable the reader to judge. The fishes of
this early age, and of all other ages previous to the chalk,
are for the most part cartilaginous. The cartilaginous
fishes — Chondropterigii of Cuvier — are placed by that
naturalist as a second series in his descending scale ; be-
ing, however, he says, " in some measure parallel to the
first." How far this is different from their being the
highest types of the fish class, need not be largely insisted
on. Linnaeus, again, was so impressed by the low charac-
ters of many of this order, that he actually ranked them
with the worms.* Some of the cartilaginous fishes, never-
* Dr. Fletcher places the Chondropterigii lowest in a scale which
36
EXPLANATIONS.
theless, haye certain peculiar features of organization,
chiefly connected with reproduction, in which they excel
other fish ; but such features are partly partaken of by
families in inferior sub-kingdoms, showing that they cannot
truly be regarded as marks of grade in their own class.
When we look to the great fundamental characters, par-
ticularly to the framework for the attachment of the mus-
cles, what do we find ? — why, that of these placoids —
" the highest types of their class !" — it is barely possible
to establish their being vertebrata at all, the back-bone
having generally been too slight for preservation, although
the vertebral columns of later fossil-fishes are as entire as
those of any other animals. In many of them, traces can
be observed of the muscles having been attached to the
external plates, strikingly indicating their low grade as
vertebrate animals. The Edinburgh reviewer's " highest
types of their class " are, in reality, a separate series of
that class, — generally inferior, taking the leading features
of organization of structure as a criterion, — but, when
details of organization are regarded, stretching further
both downward and upward than the other series ; so that,
looking at one extremity, we are as much entitled to call
them the lowest, as the reviewer, looking at another ex-
tremity, is to call them the highest of iheir class. Of the
general inferiority, there can be no room for doubt. Their
cartilaginous structure is, in the first place, analogous to
the embryotic state of vertebrated animals in general.*
takes as its criterion " an increase in the number and extent of the
manifestations of life, or of the relations which an organized being
bears to the external world."
* Cartilage, " in many animals, forms the entire structure, and in
the early state of the human embryo it does the same."— Carpen-
ter's General Physiology, p. 37.
•
FOSSILS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE.
37
The maxillary and intermaxillary bones are in them rudi-
mental. Their tails are finned on the under side only, an
admitted feature of the salmon in an embryotic stage ; and
the mouth is placed on the under side of the head, also a
mean and embryotic feature of structure. These charac-
ters are essential and important, whatever the Edinburgh
reviewer may say to the contrary ; they are the characters,
which, above all, 1 am chiefly concerned in looking to, for
they are features of embryotic progress, and embryotic
progress is the grand key to the theory of development.
I therefore throw back to my reviewer the charge that I
have " clung to feeble analogies," and " kept out of view
the broad and speaking facts of nature."
With regard to the alleged falsity of the crustacean
character of some of these fishes, and the discredit of re-
peating the blunders and guesses made by the first obser-
vers, before any good evidence was before them, I can
only say, that at the time when my book was written,
geologists and inquirers into fossil ichthyology of the high-
est character were writing, publicly and privately, of the
cephalaspis and coccosteus, as apparently links between
the Crustacea and fish, the vertical mouth of the latter ani-
mal being particularly cited, as a feature indicating the
intermediate character. In what the reviewer calls " the
excellent work of our meritorious self-taught countryman,"
Mr. Hugh Miller, published in 1841, the apparently crus-
tacean character of these fishes is repeatedly referred to.*
* Mr. Miller calls upon his readers to " mark the form of the
cephalaspis, or buckler-head, a fish of the formation over that in
which the remains of the trilobite most abound. He will find,"
he says, " the fish and crustacean are wonderfully alike : the fish
is more elongated, but both possess the crescent-shaped head, and
38
EXPLANATIONS.
Not having access at the time to the work of Agassi?, I
deemed myself safe in trusting to the report of this indus-
trious inquirer and ingenious writer, whose volume was
then newly published. How recent the contradiction of
the once-supposed affinity may be, or what faith to place
in it, I know not ; but the reader will probably hold one
who only pretends, in this instance, to the character of a
general writer, excused, when he shows so distinguished
an expositor of physiology as Dr. Carpenter, still more
recently countenancing the idea : — " The bodies of fishes,"
says he, " are usually covered with scales or plates, which
have sometimes a bony hardness, and which, in some
species of fish that do not now exist alive, appear to have
been of the density of enamel. Thus we have a sort of
transition to the external skeletons of the invertebrated ani-
mals ; and in this class, also, we not infrequently find the
internal skeleton so deficient in the stony matter from
which bone derives its hardness, that it seems like cartilage
or gristle ; and in a few of the lowest species, we do not
even find a distinct vertebral column ; so that the change
of character from the vertebrated to the invertebrated series
is a gradual, and not an abrupt one, and would probably be
found still more gradual, if we were acquainted, not only
with all the forms of animal life which now exist, but also
those which have existed in ages long gone by, and are
now extinct."
ooth the angular and apparently jointed body. They illustrate ad-
mirably how two distinct orders may meet. They exhibit the
joints, if I may so speak, at which the plated fish is linked to the
shelled crustacean. Now, the coccosteus is a stage further on ; it
is more unequivocally a fish ; it is acephalaspis, with a scale-covered
tail attached to the angular body, and the horns of the crescent-
nhaped head cutoff." — Old Red Sandstone, p. 54.
FOSSILS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE. 39
The above argument relates to the general fact of the
first fishes being placoidean. It is necessary, also, to meet
the inquiry why there should be no fossil remains indicat-
ing a transition from the lower animals to fish. The re-
viewer speaks of a recently discovered cestraceon below
any other fish-beds in England. " Such," he exclaims,
" are nature's first abortive efforts." " We entreat," he
adds, " any good naturalist well to consider such facts as
these, and tell us whether they do not utterly demolish
every attempt to derive such organic structures from any
inferior class of animal life found in the older strata ? "
Now, I cannot tell what good naturalists may say in
answer to this appeal ; but I feel, for my own part, that
• the facts in question — as far as they can be admitted to be
so — have no such destructive effect.
In the first place, the cestraceon is only one of those
cartilagines, the real character of which had just been ex-
plained. It is not the lowest of its order, but neither is it
the highest. So far from this being the case, the respira-
tion of the whole family (Selacii, Cuv. ; Plagiostomi,
Desm.) to which it belongs, and which also includes sharks,
is performed in a manner which approximates these fishes
to the worms and insects — namely, t! by numerous vesicles
called internal gills, the entrance to which is from their
gullet, while the exit is in general by corresponding aper-
tures on the side of their neck ; " * other fishes having free
gills, marking a higher organization. The sub-divided
form of the stomach — the absence of that concentration,
which is, perhaps, the most emphatic mark of animal ad-
vancement— belongs to this family alone amongst fishes,
* Fletcher's Physiology. Part 1 ., p. 20.
40
EXPLANATIONS.
as it does to the lowest families of several of the higher
orders of the vertebrata. Thus, the cestraceon is, on many
considerations, a low fish, though certainly possessing some
traits of superior character, and not the lowest of its order.
In the second place, I would protest against any inference
unfavorable to the hypothesis of development being drawn
from a discovery so new, so isolated, and in a branch of
inquiry so extremely unsettled. At no time during the
last ten years, have we had, for a twelvemonth at once,
stable views respecting the initiation of fishes. Lately —
so lately that part of my book was written at the time — the
lowest were understood to be some of a minute size, imme-
diately over the Aymestry limestone, in the Upper Silu-
rians.* Now, we have a cestraceon announced to us at a
lower point in that formation. But how far it is likely that
our information is to rest at this point the reader may
judge, when he hears of M. Agassiz announcing, within
the last few months, that, though acquainted with seven-
teen hundred species of fossil fishes, he regards the history
of the class as so far from complete, that the number of
species successively entombed in the crust of the globe
might be estimated at thirty thousand, without any chance
of approaching the truth ! f If such be the case, we may
surely expect to hear of other fishes prior to or contempo-
rary with the cestraceon, showing that, humble as that
* " The minute and curious fishes in the uppermost bed of the
Ludlow rock, are the earliest precursors of many singular ichthy-
olites which succeed in that enormous formation, the Old Red
Sandstone." — Murchison's Address to the Geological Society,
February, 1842.
t Review of Professor Pictet's Traite Elementaire de Palaeonto-
logie, translated in Jameson's Journal from the Bibliotheque Uni-
Verselle de Geneve, No. 112, 1845.
FOSSILS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE. 41
inimal was, it is not to be regarded as the initial of its
class.* But even although simpler fishes be not found in
lower or contemporary strata, this may only be owing, like
the non-discovery of vegetation in the early rocks, to the
unsuitablcness of these fishes for being preserved. Sup-
posing the inferior tribes, petromyzonidae (lampreys) to
have been then in existence, we should have no trace of
them preserved, because of their osteological structure be-
ing slight, and their wanting those teeth and spines which
form, after all, the chief memorials of the higher families
of their own order.
One word more as to these fishes. The critic says (p.
33), it is shown to demonstration in the Poissons Fossiles
of Agassiz, that " the sauroids, in their general osseous
structure, and in the development of their nobler organs,
run close upon the class of reptiles." There is no doubt
that the sauroid fishes partake of reptilian characters,
though, perhaps, in a more external and less important
way than such writers as the Edinburgh reviewer suppose ;
but, be it remembered, the sauroids are not the first fishes.
There is not one of them in the Silurian formation, where
placoideans appear to begin. Yet I do not, for this reason,
suppose that the sauroids arose from placoideans. More
probably, they are part of a distinct line of development,
* Such shifts are of frequent occurrence in geology. Insects,
formerly found first in the oolitic formation, are now taken back to
the carboniferous. Birds are now inferred from foot-tracks in the
New Red Sandstone, their first place formerly being in the oolite.
We have mammifers in the oolite, which, a few years ago, were be-
lieved not to occur before the tertiary. None of these shifts, how-
ever, in the least interfere with the general fact of the advance from
the lower to the higher classes of animals.
42
EXPLANATIONS.
which had inferior forms in its first stages, also of too
slight a structure to be preserved.
Following this reviewer into his discussion of the Car-
boniferous System, we find him commencing with a taunt,
that there are now traces of land vegetation in earlier
formations. This is, in reality, a point of no importance
for the development theory. The question is, with what
kind of plants did land vegetation begin ? The anxiety of
the reviewer to force a verdict in his favor is here strongly
shown. " What," he says, " are these first fruits of na-
ture's vegetable germs ? Are they rude, ill-fashioned
forms ? Far otherwise. We find among them palms and
tree-ferns, &c." In this passage, which substantially con-
veys the same information as my book, there is an evident
design of inducing the belief, that the first land vegetation
was of a high character. The rigid truth is, that though
this was a "grand" in the sense of a luxuriant vegetation,
it was composed, as far as positive evidence goes, almost
wholly of plants which stand low in the scale of organiza-
tion. The ascertained dicotyledons (plants having double-
lobed seeds and an exterior growth) are extremely rare.
On this point, I cannot do better than quote the laborious
young Professor of King's College — " The plants which
have hitherto been described [in the carboniferous form-
ation], belong either to the acotyledonous class, as the
ferns, or to the monocotyledons, and, on the whole, they
constitute the simplest forms of vegetation ; but there have
also been met with among coal plants, unquestionable
evidences of dicotyledonous structure, and a genus has
been formed under the name of Pinites, to include a
number of specimens of fossil wood, &c."* To the un-
* Ansted's Geology, 1844.
FOSSILS OF CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. 43
doubted evidence of Mr. Ansted, may be added that of
his more eminent contemporary, Mr. Lyell, whose sense
of the botanical character of this age is such that he
emphatically calls it the Age of Ferns.* It is evident,
then, taking the landscape of this era as the first, that
it is of a nature to harmonize with the development the-
ory, for its chief forms are humble, and only a few are
of higher grade, most of these, too, being of an interme-
diate character between the low and the high. I am re-
minded, however, in other quarters, of certain experiments
of Dr. Lindley, showing that the plants chiefly found in
the coal are of the^inds which best resist decomposition
in water ; whence it is inferred that many trees of a high
class may have existed at that time, but perished in the
sea, while weaker vegetation survived. This evidence
would be negative at the best ; and it says as much for the
non-preservation of mosses and other humble plants as for
dicotyledons. It has also been remarked that, considering
such facts as the disappearance of equisetum hyemale in
water, a plant containing an unusual quantity of silex,
" the proportion of fossil plants in each formation must de-
pend on other circumstances besides their power of resist-
ing decom position. "f " Too much importance has," in the
opinion of the author of this observation, " been attached
to Dr. Lindley's experiments.'"'
The British Quarterly Review says — " The author ad-
mits there were dicotyledons among these plants, and does
not see that, however few they may be, it entirely upsets
* Travels in North America, ii., 52.
t Mr. C. J. Bunbury, at the British Association, 1845 ; Athenae-
um's Report.
44
EXPLANATIONS.
the theory of progressive advance, especially in the ab-
sence of any proof as to whether they were created first
or last." This proceeds, as do many similar objections,
upon the idea that a formation represents one point in time.
A formation, in reality, represents many years, or rather
ages. Such expressions as that simple and complex plants
occur together in the carboniferous formation, or even
(shall we say) in its first fossil bands, are vague ex-
pressions, perhaps conveying an idea substantially false.
There is no such precision in the ascertained relations of
fossils to particular strata, as to entitle any one to say that
the simple and complex plants of this vfprmation are rigidly
contemporaneous. They may have followed each other
within the space of half a century in a particular region,
and yet been preserved in but one stratum, or little group of
strata. The actual appearances of the carboniferous form-
ation thus, perhaps, allow full time for a progressive ad-
vance in particular regions, from the fleshy luxuriant
plants of the marsh and low sea margin, to the robust tree
of the more elevated regions. We must remember, too,
that the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, even if we
take it back to include the confer said to have lately been
found in the Old Red of Cromarty, or the fern leaf of the
Silurians, was preceded by unequivocally simple plants in
the fucoids. Starting with these, and finding the first great
burst of land vegetation composed mainly of low cryptoga-
mic and monocotyledonous plants, — finding, moreover, the
exceptions chiefly of the intermediate character, and that
the dicotyledons increase afterwards while the others de-
cline,— we cannot well resist the conclusion, that we see
the traces of a progress in the history of this kingdom of
nature. It may be less clear than we could wish ; but
FOSSILS OF THE PERMIAN SYSTEM.
45
Buch light as we have certainly favors the development
theory.
We now come to the Magnesian Limestone deposit, lat-
terly called the Permian System. At this place, the Edin-
burgh reviewer introduces some general observations,
which I hope he will yet acknowledge to be unjust, as I
am sure the whole of his substantive charges are. " It
may be true," he says, " that sea- weeds came first, but of
this we have no proof." How a. good geologist can have
allowed himself to speak in this manner, even in eager-
ness to theorise against theory, I am quite at a loss to un-
derstand, for the positive facts of the occurrence of fucoids
in the Lower Silurians, and of the very first traces of land
vegetation in subsequent formations, are as palpable and
undoubted as he himself acknowledges the precedence of
fish by invertebrata to be ; nor has any one ever pretended
to expect that land vegetation would be found earlier than
the marine. I have here ventured no conjecture of my
own, but only spoken as all the geological books teach.
" Of land plants," he continues, " we have not the shadow
of proof that the simpler forms came into being before the
more complex." The reader has just been told upon un-
doubted authority that, in the first great show of land vege-
tation, taking such positive evidence as we have, the sim-
ple forms are vastly more numerous than the complex.
Finding that we have first ample marine vegetation, then
a land vegetation in which the plants, with only a small
exception, are cellular and cryptogamic, while of the ex-
ception a very small number are dicotyledonous, and a con-
spicuous group (the conifers) intermediate — I feel that I
am entitled to say that positive evidence speaks for a pre-
cedence of high but simple forms ; which is what I have
46
EXPLANATIONS.
done. " It is true," thus proceeds the reviewer, " that we
see polypiaria, crinoidea, articulata, and mollusca ; but it
is not true that we meet with them in the order stated by
our author." It is humiliating to have to answer an objec-
tion so mean. There is no statement that the animals
came in this order. I have only put the words into this
arrangement, in accordance with the custom now commonly
followed of observing the ascending grades of the animal
kingdom. With respect, then, to what follows — " The
sentence on which we here comment contains three
distinct propositions, and all three are false to nature, and
no better than a dream," — I believe I may safely leave the
reader to say which party is the falsifier and the dreamer.
He goes on in the same strain — " It is true that the next step
gives us fishes ; but it is not true that the earliest fishes
link on to the radiata : this is a grand and at the present
day an unpardonable blunder." This is another dream
of the reviewer, for certainly such an affinity was not sug-
gested in any edition of the Vestiges hitherto published.
In the first four editions, which alone were under his no-
tice, no passage except from the articulata was even hinted
at. So much as a proof of the reviewer's recklessness in
making charges ; there is no need, however, to affirm, with
him, that a connexion between certain high radiates and
some of the lowest fishes does not exist. I venture to pre-
dict that affinities of an equally startling nature will yet
be made familiar to naturalists. Meanwhile, it is enough
to show that this confident critic has raised an accusation
for which he has not a shadow of ground.
Taking up the special fossils of the Permian system, he
says, " The earliest reptiles are not of such a structure as
to link themselves, on a natural scale, to the noble sauroids
EARLIEST REPTILES.
47
sf the preceding carboniferous epoch." They are not the
iiarine saurians, or fish lizards (ichthyosauri) which occur
in a higher formation, but lacertilians, or animals of
lizard-like character. Now what first strikes me here is
the extraordinary narrowness of a mind which sees no-
thing indicative of natural procedure, no hint towards great
generalizations, in the simple fact of reptiles following
upon fish in this grand march of life through the morning
time of the world. He knows that, in every classification
of the animal kingdom, reptiles rank next above fish, that
in some living families there is such a convention and
intermixture of both characters, that naturalists cannot
agree to which class they should be assigned. He actually
sees, in a general view of the earlier reptiliferous forma-
tions, animals combining the fish and reptile in the most
unequivocal manner. Despising, however, the great fact
which shines through these obscurities, this person, and I
am sorry to add, geologists generally, can only fasten upon
such particulars as may be made out to be difficulties in
the way of generalization. Passing to the particulars, a
few land lacertilians come first, whereas the first, according
to my hypothesis, ought to be marine forms, and linked to
fish. He says of this difficulty, that I have stated it feebly.
Perhaps it would have been well for his own credit that
he had stated it somewhat less confidently ; for before his
sheets had seen the light, a prospect had arisen of his
affirmations on this point being thoroughly falsified. In
SillimarCs Journal, for April, 1845, is an account of sand-
stone surfaces pretty far down in the Carboniferous forma-
tion of Pennsylvania, marked with the vestiges of terrestrial
animals. Setting aside in the meantime one class of these
markings, which are said to indicate wading birds, we
48 EXPLANATIONS.
have a variety of others plainly denoting reptiles. In
one group, the foot consists of a ball, with five toes radiat-
ing from it in front. In another, the impression resembles
that made by a coarse human hand, with the rudiment of
a sixth toe at the outside. The reptilian families indicated
by these foot-marks have not yet been pronounced upon,
as far as I am aware : but from the extreme resemblance
i '
of some of them to the vestiges of the labyrinthidon, there
can hardly be a doubt that some of the order batrachia are
amongst them. If they prove wholly batrachian, as is not
unlikely, for we have living families with feet resembling
the first group of vestiges, or even if only a portion of
them be certified as of this order, where will be the lacer-
tilians, and where the confident counter-assertions of the
Edinburgh reviewer ? The batrachia he has himself
allowed to be a low order of reptiles (p. 51). They are
so considered by all naturalists. Might 1 not here, then,
take my stand upon the fact of animals, the lowest
apparently of the reptile order, being now found at the
earliest point of time ? I might unquestionably do so with
a decided immediate advantage to my hypothesis. It
would in a great measure neutralise the whole of the
objections of the reviewer with regard to the chronology
of the reptiles. But I am, whatever he may think of me,
willing to read the book of nature aright. I receive the
fact as one liable any day to receive a new aspect from
fresh discoveries. In as far as it is so, it only teaches that
we are not to be too confident in drawing inferences either
for or against the theory of development from the particular
succession in which the orders of the reptilia occur in
those early strata where their remains and vestiges are few.
In as far as it may be taken as a positive fact, I only
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
49
claim a modified benefit from it, because the view which
I take of the affinities and connexions of the animal king-
dom (and by analogy of the vegetable kingdom also)
makes it a matter of less consequence than would be
generally supposed, which order of any class appears first
in the stone record, though still perhaps a matter of some
consequence.
This view suggests that development has not proceeded,
as is usually assumed, upon a single line which would
require all the orders of animals to be placed one after an-
other, but in a plurality of lines in which the orders, and even
minuter subdivisions, of each class, are ranged side hy side.
It also suggests that the development of these various lines
has proceeded independently in various regions of the
earth, so as to lead to forms not everywhere so like as to
fall within our ideas of specific character, but generally,
or in some more vague degree, alike. The progress of
the lines becomes clearest when we advance into the ver-
tebrate sub-kingdom. We can there trace several of them
with tolerable distinctness, as they singly pass through the
four classes of Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals ; the
Birds, however, being a branch in some part derived
equally with the reptiles from fishes, and thus leaving
some of the mammal order in immediate connexion with
the reptiles. The lines or stirpes have all of them pecu-
liar characters which persist throughout the various grades
of being passed through, one presenting carnivorous,
another gentle and innocent animals, and so on. We
have, therefore, in the animal kingdom, not one long range
of affinities, but a number of short series, in each of which
a certain general character is observable, though not
always to the exclusion of the organic peculiarities of
4
50
EXPLANATIONS.
families in neighboring lines, especially in the class of
reptiles.
According to this view, the matrix of organic life is,
speaking generally, the sea. Fluid, required for all
embryotic conditions, is also necessary to the origination
of the various stirpes of both kingdoms. The whole of the
lowest animal sub-kingdom (Radiata) is aquatic : so are
nearly the Mollusca and a very large proportion of the
Articulata. In the Vertebrata, the lowest class also is
wholly aquatic. The arrangement appears to be this —
the basis of each line is a series of marine forms ; the
remainder consists of a series designed to breathe the
atmosphere and live upon land, these being all of improved
organization. The classification which this system implies
may be said to be transverse to all ordinary classifications.
The invertebrate, ichthyic, reptilian, ornithoid, and mam-
malian characters are horizontal grades, through which
the lines pass, and where they send off branches ; not
separate and independent divisions. In any of these
branches where we have a clear knowledge of the various
forms, it is possible to trace the affinities, in conjunction
with an improved organization, through genera which are
adapted to a partially marine life, to a residence in the
mouths of rivers, or on shores and muddy shallows, then
through genera which are, in succession, appropriate to
marshes, jungles, dry elevated plains, and mountains.
And it is this series of external conditions and adaptations
which has caused that system of analogies between various
families of animals which has of late attracted attention.
But the immediate cause of the development of each line
through its various general grades of being is to be sought
in an internal impulse, the nature of which is unknown to
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 51
us, but which resembles the equally mysterious impulse
by which an individual embryo is passed through its suc-
cession of grades until ushered into mature existence.
Geology shows us each line taking a long series of ages
to advance from its humble invertebrate effluents to its
highest mammalian forms ; and this I have ventured to
call " the universal gestation of Nature."
The traces of this order of the animal kingdom have
been seen in all ages of science. Every zoologist ac-
knowledges the gradations and affinities which appear
amongst animals. Prompted by what so palpably meets
observation, many have tried to range the various orders
or families in one line, or (to use the favorite phrase) chain
of being ; but they have always failed, which is not to be
wondered at. One cause why zoologists have not up to
this time thought of trying any different arrangement, is
the confusion arising from prevalence amongst many
families of parallelisms of structure, which have been
regarded as affinities, when in reality they are only identi-
cal characters demanded by common conditions, or result-
ing from equality of grade in the scale. True affinities —
and these are the affinities of genealogy — are not to be
looked for horizontally amongst orders, but vertically, from
an order in one class to the corresponding order in the
class next higher. Generally, the first and lowest forms
of the orders in a class are marine, and often these are of
comparatively large size. We usually see in them a
vestige of the essential characters of the class next below.
Thus, the perennibranchiate batrachia in their order, the
ichthyosauri in the series of crocodilia, and the divers
among birds, all exhibit an affinity to fish. The cetacea
and phocidoe, which I regard as the immediate basis of the
52
EXPLANATIONS.
pachydermata, carnivora, and other orders of terrestrial
mammals, ought, according to this view, to show an alliance
to the reptiles ; and such a connection does exist between
the cetacea and certain marine sauria ; but from the
general extinction of the marine reptiles, the linking of
the mammals to that lower class is less clearly seen than
might be wished. It must be kept in view that only an
outline of the progress of the animal kingdom is here
designed. Exceptions as to the course which development
has taken appear to be by no means few ; leading to the
idea that the grades of organization are not determinate in
this respect, but may be reached by steps of unequal
length. Thus, for example, the marsupials appear very
clearly a development from certain birds ; probably the
rodent and edentate orders are derived through the same
channel. From the approach made by certain of the
reptilia to birds, we may surmise that there also there are
exceptions to the rule. In short, the progress of animality
in the different stirpes has been attended by peculiarities
which evidently affix peculiar characters to each, and
make the idea of a difference in time not only probable, but
unavoidable.
Regarding the animal kingdom simply as a combination
of independent stirpes, each with its distinct affinities, the
theory of transmutation puts on a totally new aspect ; so
truly is this the case, that transmutation is hardly any
longer a term appropriate to the idea. The difficulty of
supposing such changes as that from the rodent to the
ruminant, or the carnivorous animal to the quadrumane,
vanishes, leaving only transitions from one form to another
of a series generally similar — from the aquatic pachyderm,
for instance, to the terrestrial, from the otary to the otter,
EARLY REPTILIAN FOSSILS.
53
from certain phocEe to the bear, and so on. There is a
unity in all instances in the moral as well as physical
characters of the various members of one stirps ; we
only see it advancing from low to high characters, just as
we see the foetus of a high animal passing through various
inferior stages before it reach its proper mature character.
The lines, moreover, being independent of each other, and
not quite uniform as to the stages of animality through
which they pass, it follows that, unless we knew of some
law governing their different gestative periods, we are not
entitled to look for the first occurrence of their various
ichthyic, reptilian, and mammalian sections, in any order
as regards each other, even though we could be sure
(which we are not) that we are surveying a geographical
region where they all started fair in the race of progres-
sive organization. Hence it is that, though the batrachia
are usually placed by zoologists at the bottom of the list
of reptilian orders, I attach little importance to their ves-
tiges being now found so low. All that I think we can
expect is, that, in a particular area where we have reason
to believe that the lines have started abreast, they should
all reach their various grades nearly about one time, or
what may be considered as one time compared with the
whole extent of geological chronology. And such ap-
pears to be pretty much the case in those regions which
geologists have explored.
The Edinburgh reviewer will observe that this view of
the animal kingdom leaves much of his opposition in a
very awkward predicament. He has everywhere assumed
that the genealogy of the orders of each class was sup-
posed to be en suite, which it certainly never was in my
book. In the early editions I spoke with diffidence of the
54 EXPLANATIONS.
course of the supposed development,* because I had not
then seen or conceived any arrangement of the animal
kingdom which answered to that hypothesis, although I
thought proper to attempt to show that the quinarian and
circular classification, which I found in vogue at the time
when I was writing, did not necessarily militate against
it. In the third edition, the present view was first hinted
at ; and in the fourth it was sketched, though with liability
to correction ; thus anticipating by some months the pub-
lication of the criticism to which I am adverting. I need
hardly remark, that in all criticism, the actual subject
criticized must be brought forward for comment, and
nothing else ; otherwise the commentaries become of no
imaginable use but to obscure true judgment. Now the
Edinburgh reviewer has presented his subject, in this in-
stance, in lineaments entirely of his own imagining, and
directly in contradiction to those which belong to it. He
had no title to assume any plan of development and to
represent his victory over that as a triumph over the hy-
pothesis of his author. In such conduct, he has thoroughly
vitiated the whole fabric of his criticism, and left it, in
reality, no pretension to remain for a moment in court.
My immediate object, however, is not to take such excep-
tions against him, but to show how the ascertained facts
of a limited portion of the field of nature may be recon-
ciled with that conception to which a view of what ap-
pears over the whole field may lead an honest inquirer.
If the hypothesis of a plurality of genetic lines be ad-
* " . . it does not appear that this gradation passes along one
line, on which every animal form can be, as it were, strung ; there
may be branching or double lines at some places," &c. — Vestiges,
let ed.,p. 191.
EARLY HCrTlLIAN FOSSILS.
55
mitted, we are not of course to ask which order of rep-
tiles, or of any other class, first existed (such being the
language of the old classification) ; but, having first set-
tled the whole affinities of the animal kingdom on the new
plan, we are to inquire if the geological presentment of
the families was accordant with the scheme, allowing for
the negative nature of much of the geological evidence
of this kind. Now, in the first place, the affinities of the
animal kingdom are only in part made out ; in the second,
geological evidence is only partial. We are clearly,
therefore, not to expect in nature's museum a full exhibi-
tion of any one entire stirps, as it may be supposed to
have passed through its successive stages up to our time.
All that we can expect is a succession of fossils marking
out portions of what we may suppose likely yet to be es-
tablished as lines of animal descent. Blanks, and large
ones too, must be allowed for ; possible errors as to the
animal pedigrees must be contemplated. But, if we have
any ground for generalizing in a particular direction, as I
think there is in this case, we may be held as called upon
not to conclude hastily and rashly on the unfavorable
side, but to look and consider patiently, and to suspend
judgment wherever the adverse evidence may appear to
be of a nature likely to be reversed. Let us now see
how all this applies to the conduct of the Edinburgh re-
viewer, with regard to the early reptilian fossils. The
formations where these occur have only been examined
in such a degree, that they are almost every year giving
forth new responses : for example, the existence of birds
at this era was not dreamt often years ago ; the existence
of tortoises in the time of the New Red Sandstone was
equally unknown only two or three years earlier. It is
56
EXPLANATIONS.
a still less time since the labyrinthidonts of the Keuperof
Germany were discovered ; and we have just seen that
the unqualified affirmations of the Edinburgh reviewer,
as to the oldest reptiles, were overturned by intelligence
from America, before his sheets had seen the light. When
these things are considered, we must see the objections of
the reviewer to be extremely rash. It might be allowed
that the earliest known lacertilia are not of strictly ma-
rine forms or allied to fish ; it might equally be admitted
of the first batrachians, that " their near affinities are not
with fishes," as this writer takes it upon him to say. Yet
we should still see the absurdity of affirming that either
these batrachia or lacertilia were the first created of their
respective orders, seeing that their relics were so few and
the discovery of these so accidental, that we might look
for new and superseding facts every day.*
But, as the case actually stands, is this line of defence
more than hypothetically necessary ?' I doubt it very
much. The lacertilia of the magnesian limestone, and
these labyrinthidonts of the Trias (perhaps also of the
carboniferous formation), are they so far removed from
fish characters as the reviewer would make them ? Let
any naturalist who has ever studied the transmutation of
* It is necessary to guard against a supposition that I undervalue
such isolated relics, as inferring the positive fact of the existence
of particular orders of animals at particular times. For this pur-
pose, the smallest fragment betraying the character of the organiza-
tion is often sufficient. What is really meant is, that, when we
find a few outlying relics belonging to a class which does not ap-
pear in any force till afterwards, we cannot be sure that we have
acquired the means of forming a distinct idea of the lime of the
origin of that class or the orders with which the class started,
as further discoveries on these points may be looked for.
EARLY REPTILIAN FOSSILS.
57
the individual batrachian, passing in a few weeks from the
branchiated fish to the lunged and limbed frog or newt, its
circulatory and alimentary system entirely changed, and
then say if the labyrinthidon may not be the very first
step from some ichthyic form. What though the propor-
tions of the head remind Mr. Owen of the sauria, and re-
move the animal, as he thinks, above the present batra-
chian type ! Against any such inferences we have the
positive fact, in the organization of this batrachian, of a
biconcave form of the vertebrae, the form peculiar 1o fishes,
— arguing, by Mr. Owen's own acknowledgement, aqua-
tic if not marine habits, — also a decidedly piscine charac-
ter in the arrangement and even microscopic structure of
the teeth, together with that position of the breathing
apertures near the end of the snout which we see in croco-
diles, for the purpose of allowing them to drag their prey
under water without ceasing to respire. With regard to
the lacertilia, we have this same fish-like biconcave form
of the vertebras, and the same fish-like arrangement of the
teeth, equally arguing that alliance to the lower vertebrate
class which it is the pleasure of this hardy critic to deny,
— the biconcave structure of the reptiles, showing, as Mr.
Owen himself owns, that these animals, which the Edin-
burgh reviewer deems so utterly separated from fish, had
probably " a more aquatic, if not marine theatre of life,'"*
than was assigned to their successors. In subsequent and
present reptiles, this form is superseded by the ball and
socket, or concavo-convex form ; but it is remarkable
that, in the embryo state, the frog and crocodile (if not
* On the Reptilian Fossils of South Africa. Geological Trans-
actions, Feb., 1845.
4*
58
EXPLANATIONS.
others) exhibit the double hollow form still, resembling in
this respect the mature animal of the secondary rocks.
Such is the actual character of reptiles which our critic
would set up as high : he has, after this, only to speak
of the annelid as above the butterfly, or the proteus as su-
perior to the land salamander, to establish his character
as a naturalist. Need I say that these Permian reptiles
are, in reality, by these facts degraded to a place in prox-
imity with fishes ?
So much for the batrachia and lacertilia. When we
come to the great saurian line in the Muschelkalk, Lias,
Oolite, and Wealden, we have a case which cannot be
disputed, for here the marine character of the earliest of
the series, and their intermediateness between fish and true
crocodiles, are admitted by all. The first remove from the
fish is the ichthyosaur, its name declaring the convention
of class characters for which it is remarkable. With
piscine body and tail, and fins advanced into a paddle
form, it has a true crocodilian head. In the pliosaur, which
is later in appearing, we have a stage of advance to the
true sauria, which come forward in the oolite, in the forms
of teleosaurus, steneosaurus, &c. Afterwards, chiefly in
the Wealden, we have the dinosauria, which betray an
approach to the mammalian type in the pachydermatous
order. Another oolite saurian, the cetiosaur, exhibits in
the form of the vertebrse a verging towards the cetaceous
mammalia. Here there is the most perfect and even
striking harmony with the theory of a progressive deve-
lopment. Below these formations, fish : then, low in these
formations, fish saurians ; above them, true and complete
saurians ; finally, higher still, saurians advancing to a
more elevated grade of animality ; and where do these
EARLY REPTILIAN FOSSILS.
59
more elevated types occur ? In tiie next formation, pass-
ing over one which hardly represents any but deep-sea life.
Nay, cetaceous relics have been found before we leave the
strata so remarkable for the saurians. Thus, it appears
that the whole of this chapter of palaeontology, when read
by a light from nature, and not from man's capricious hu-
mor, so far from being opposed to the natural genesis of
animals, gives it support. Men, however, and of lively
parts too, might go on for an age misreading such palpable
facts, if they be determined against putting them into the
collocation in which a sense can be made of them, just as
we might puzzle for ever over a Latin or Greek sentence,
if obstinately resolved against making English out of it ex-
cept in its original construction.
After presenting the case of the reptilian fossils of the
secondary formation in this way, I feel it hardly necessary
to track the Edinburgh reviewer through all his particular
objections. They are a mass of confusion, resulting from
erroneous assumptions on his own part respecting the de-
velopment theory, as that the orders of animals are all to
be affiliated to each other, and every parental form held
as extinguished by the fact of transmutation (the latter
being a peculiarly gratuitous supposition — see p. 50 of the
Review) ; together with equally rash and unjustified con-
clusions regarding the earliest forms of the reptilian orders,
all mixed up in the way that promised to tell most effec-
tually in favor of his own opinion, and with a disregard of
everything that pointed in the opposite direction. The
great unquestioned facts of a succession of birds and mam-
mals to the fishes and reptiles, these being also the next
higher classes in the scale of the naturalist, tell nothing
to this writer, as the succession of the reptiles to the fishes
60
EXPLANATIONS.
told nothing before. From the slight remarks with which
he passes over these facts, an unlearned reader would
hardly suppose that they were of the least significance,
while, in reality, they are of the greatest. It is much the
same as if a historian were to sink all such events as
changes of dynasties, and fix attention upon the displace-
ment of under-secretaries of state. And what makes this
conduct the more marked is, that the minor facts upon
which he fastens for the purpose of supporting his own
theory, are mostly presented to us in circumstances which
show their uncertainty and the likelihood of their being
superseded.
For example, the earliest traces of birds do not indicate
marine forms, which, according to my general views,
ought, he says, to be the case. Instead of natatorial birds,
they are waders and runners. Let the reader judge of
the character of this objection, when he learns the real
circumstances of the case. The traces of birds here
spoken of are merely a few foot-prints found upon certain
rock surfaces in America. Not a bone of these animals
has been found in this early period. It must therefore be
inferred, either that the circumstances were not favorable
for the entombment of the bodies of these birds, or that our
researches in the strata formed at the time when they lived
have been insufficient to discover them. If such be the
case with birds which lived upon shores, — places where,
as we learn from the nature of the strata, accumulations
of sand and mud were constantly taking place, — it is of
course -not to be expected that any remains of natatorial
birds should be found, animals mostly living far out at sea.
To put the case in its strongest form — foot-prints on
shores being the record of the birds of this era, we are not
EARLY CETACEOUS FOSSILS.
61
to expect any traces of such birds as, generally speaking,
are not in the way of making foot-prints on shores. I
might go further than this, and point out that certain nata-
torial genera have feet not to be distinguished from those
of waders, so that certain of these foot-prints may be those
of natatorial species after all ; but I feel it to be my best
duty in the case, only to deny that we are in circumstances
to say that waders and runners were the first created birds.
Mr. Lyell, who stands as high as this or any other writer
on geology, says, with regard to those very ornithichnites,
as they are called — " This sandstone is of much higher
antiquity than any formation in which fossil bones or any
other indications of birds have been detected in Europe.
Still we have no ground for inferring from such facts, that
the feathered tribe made its first appearance in the western
hemisphere at this period. It is too common a fallacy to fix
the era of the first creation of each tribe of plants or animals,
and even of animate beings in general, at the precise point
where our -present retrospective knowledge happens to stop."*
What now gives force to this observation is, the recent dis-
covery of a new set of bird foot-prints — said to be of waders
only — in the carboniferous formation of Pennsylvania.
The emergence of such a fact in the midst of the review-
er's speculations on the foot-prints of the New Red Sand-
stone, forms a most emphatic commentary on all decisive
inferences where the facts are obviously casual and
isolated.
Of a somewhat different character are the reviewer's
remarks on the first relics of mammalia — the few bones of
cetacea from the Lower Oolite and of marsupials from the
* Travels in North America, i., 255.
62
EXPLANATIONS.
Stonesfield Slate. Here the very first mammal family is
undoubtedly marine ; and, if it were to receive equal con-
sideration with the grallatorial foot-prints, he ought cer-
tainly to admit that it favors the development theory. But
he escapes from this claim by a mode of his own. He has
not seen these relics ! The American foot-prints were
good evidence, without being seen ; but a fact which makes
against his theory requires personal inspection, even though
it may come forward with the authority of Baron Cuvier.*
He is more at ease with the marsupials, which are of
course unequivocally land animals. I have only here to
refer to the fourth edition of my book — published two
months before the appearance of the review, and while I
was unrecking of any great objection being grounded on
this point — where it is suggested that the peculiar organi-
zation of the marsupials points to their having been derived
through a different medium from other mammals. The
critic, eager to let nothing escape, tells us that there are
other land mammals lower in organic type than the mar-
supials. One answer to this objection might be found in
an explanation of my views respecting the ornithic descent
of these animals ; but I am unwilling to pause upon such
an inferior matter, and will therefore meet him with the
question, if any other mammals show that lowly grade of
organization which is marked by the absence of a placenta ?
" There are no other organic types," he says, " to which
they [the marsupials] offer the shadow of a near affinity.
* " There is in the Oxford Museum an ulna from the Great
Oolite of Enstone, near Woodstock, Oxton, which was examined by
Cuvier and pronounced to be cetaceous ; and also a portion of a
very large rib, apparently of a whale, from the same locality."—
Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, i., 115, note.
AFFINITIES OF MARSUFIAL1A.
63
They are therefore in direct antagonism with the scheme
of regular development." To this it may be replied, that
the affinity of the marsupials to the oviparous vertebrata is
admitted by every naturalist, being shown in the small size
of the brain and consequent exposure of the cerebellum,
the absence of the septum lucidum and corpus callosum in
the brain, and various other traits. Professor R'ymer
Jones, of King's College, whose testimony on such a point
will be admitted by the reviewer, speaks of the marsupials
as " connecting links between the oviparous and placental
vertebrata." Striking traits of their affinity to birds are
shown, he says, in the structure of the ear and of the re-
productive organs.* In reality, the whole figure of the
cursorial bird, the small head upon the long neck, the ex-
treme length of the hinder limbs, and the imperfect deve-
lopment of the fore extremities, as well as the tendency of
the feathers to a hair-like character, speak irresistibly for
its approach to certain marsupials. The ornithorhynchus
is as clearly an advance from the natatorial bird towards
the rodent form, the latter being an order whose osteologi-
cal structure is allowed by every naturalist to be bird-like.
New and curious illustrations of the connexion between the
birds and the implacental mammalia are constantly ap-
pearing. We lately heard of a bird which has a pouch
for its young like the kangaroo,! and Mayer has discovered
in the female emeu a purse form of certain organs, indi-
cating an approach to the marsupial in that part of struc-
ture which is the most distinctive in the case.:}: It would
appear that the reviewer is simply ignorant of this depart-
ment of natural history, and, with the self-esteem which
* General View of the Structure of the Animal Kingdom.
f Magazine of Natural History. J Reports of Ray Society, I.
64
EXPLANATIONS.
often attends upon ignorance, he has somewhat unluckily
ventured to give a positive contradiction to that which is
incontestably true.
The reviewer at length comes to the organic phenomena
of the Tertiary system. " On the theory of development,"
says he, " ' the stages of advance are in all cases very
small — from species to species,' and the phenomena, ' as
shown in the pages of geology, are always of a simple
and modest character.' Let us test these assumptions by
one single step, from the chalk to the London clay, or any
other tertiary deposit. Among the millions of organic
forms, from corals up to mammals, we find hardly so much
as one single secondary species." The exceptions in
reality are, the infusoria of the chalk, and "two or three
secondary species," which are said to " straggle into the
tertiary system." " Organic nature," he says, " is once
more on a new pattern — plants as well as animals are
changed. It might seem as if we had been transported to
a new planet ; for neither in the arrangement of the genera
and species, nor in their affinities with the types of an older
world, is there the shadow of any approach to a regular
plan of organic development." Now the almost total
break in the organic creation here insisted upon, occurs in
the interval between the extensive deposits of the secon-
dary formation, and the comparatively isolated deposits of
the tertiary. It is an interval which the lithological
arrangements clearly indicate to have been longer than
any of those between the other formations, during which
minor changes of organic creation had taken place. It is
simply, then, a period not represented by strata or by fos-
sils ; while it elapsed, the continual advance of the organic
world proceeded to a point at which nearly all the old spe-
*
TERTIARY FOSSILS.
65
cies had died out or been changed. There was nothing
more in the "step" of our reviewer than this. Such is
the geological doctrine. " Is the present creation of life,"
says Professor Phillips, "a continuation of the previous
ones ; a term of the same long series of communicated
being ? I answer, yes."* " There is no break," he says,
" in the vast chain of organic development till we reach
the existing order of things." The reader will further be
able to judge of the candor of the reviewer respecting the
zoology of the tertiary, when he is reminded that it shows
exactly those new portions of the animal kingdom which
might have been expected, according to the theory of
development. Heretofore, we have only few and faint
traces of mammalia ; but now they are added in abun-
dance, mammalia being the crowning class of the verte-
brated form. As far as class, therefore, is concerned, it is
incontestably a " regular plan of organic development."
But this is not all. We have seen the reptile forms of the
secondary approaching the cetacean character ; and now
there is an abundance of the aquatic mammalia, as well as
of those land pachyderms which are universally classed
with some of the forms of that order, these being the only
suite of creatures which my ideas of development would
lead me to expect at this place. Here I must meet the
reviewer on a special ground. He admits the dinosaurs
to have been the nearest approach to mammals ; but " they
died away," he says (" if we are to trust to geology), ages
before the end of the chalk." These mammals have,
therefore, " no zoological base to rest upon." That is,
there is no connection between them and any such animals
* He adds — " But not as the offspring is a continuation (f the
parent."
66
EXPLANATIONS.
as the dinosaurs, because there is an interval in the creta
ceous formation which gives neither these forms nor any
intermediate. Now, the fact is admitted by Professor An-
sted, that the cretaceous system appears to have been
" formed, for the most part, by deposits in deep water, and
a considerable portion of it not far from the zero of animal
life"* And this he states with a particular reference to
the results of Professor Edward Forbes's researches in the
Egean sea. We therefore have a satisfactory explanation
of the non-appearance of forms intermediate to the rep-
tiles and mammals in the chalk, without being driven to
suppose, with our reviewer, that the latter were a creation
de novo of animal life. But no such fact as this did it
suit our reviewer to state.
" Carnivora," he proceeds to say, " are as old as pachy-
derms. As far, at least, as we have any evidence bearing
on the question, and bimana (monkeys) are found in this
division — thus contradicting and stultifying the upper end
of our author's grand creative scale." There is here, in
reality, no stultification except in the critic's own mind.
It was not my scale which he refers to, but Dr. Fletch-
er's ; adopted into my book, not as a plan of the actual
process of development, but as a general indication of the
comparative organization of the animal orders. I do not
consider the assumed contemporaneousness of the carnivora
and monkeys (which the reviewer erroneously calls bima-
na) as at all contradictory of a true development theory,
for I regard them all as distinct lines of development,
which might well advance to a certain stage (namely, that
of the terrestrial mammal), about the same time. I am
* Ansted's Geology, i., 502.
TERTIARY FOSSILS.
07
not, however, entitled to blame the reviewer for this objec-
tion, as the idea of a development in a plurality of lines
must be new to him.
" As we ascend," he says, " towards the middle divi-
sions of the [tertiary] series, there is a development of
nature's kingdom, nearer and nearer to living types. But
it is not a development after our author's scheme. It fol-
lows the law of the rise, progress, and decline of the fami-
lies of the older world, already pointed out. We have no
confusion of genera and species, and no shades of struc-
ture to make dim their outlines." Now there is here an
acknowledgment, in which all geologists accord, of a con-
stant gradual approach to living types. Is not this, in
itself, a fact speaking strongly for some simply natural
procedure in the origin of the present tribes ? A change
goes on from one set of forms to another, in the same way
as one human generation is changed for another — namely,
by the withdrawal of some and the addition of others, until
at length the whole personnel of one age is superseded by
that of another. The removal of old species is the result,
by our critic's own showing, of law ; and laws for the ex-
tinction of species are in operation at the present day.
Can we well suppose the rise of the new species to be a
phenomenon of an essentially different character ? for
here is the whole question at issue. I say, no — any ideas
I have ever acquired of philosophy, as an expression of
our ascertainment of the order of nature or providence,
forbid me to form such a conclusion. A " confusion of
genera or species" is not to be presumed ; there is no need
for a shading of structure to make dim their outlines. I
suggest, that a line of organization, analogous to the pro-
gress of the embryo of an elevated species, had passed in
68
EXPLANATIONS.
the course of time through its appointed stages of develop*
ment, each of which is a small advance upon the preced
ing, and the type of a form thenceforth to continue perma-
nent. Each line stands apart. It may show shadings in
a vertical direction, as between its reptilian and its mam-
mal forms, but no true affinities connecting horizontally
with the members of other lines. Our critic is here, there-
fore, completely at fault. I meet him again, however, on
special grounds. Many of the animals of the tertiary
period are of large bulk. We have not only huge exam-
ples of the pachyderm order, in which there are still exist-
ing many bulky species, but we have equally vast crea-
tures belonging to the rodent, the edentate, and other
orders. These huge mammals are, indeed, the signal
forms of this period, the forms by which the whole tertiary
system is most distinguished. Now, if we take the living
pachyderm order, we shall find that the largest species are
of the lowest organization. For example, the elephant,
with its short metatarsus, is a low form compared with the
horse, in which the heel is raised so much above the
ground. This is a progress of characters which could be
shown in many other families. It is a progress which may
be generally described as passing from the phocal form of
the hind extremities, through the plantigrade, and ascend-
ing to its ultimatum in the digitigrade. Now this progress
is coincident with the distribution of the various lines of
animals in physical geography, for while the first are ma-
rine, the second are generally found in connection with
shores, rivers, and low grounds, and the last (always the
smallest) with the more varied surface of the interior.
When we find, then, animals of the second kind most con-
spicuous in this period, we have actual phenomena remark
OPINIONS OF CUVIER AND AGASSIZ. 69
ably in accordance with the scheme of development. We
look in, as it were, upon the world, or at least, its chief
zoological province, at the time when the lines had attained
to the terrestrial mammal forms fitted for fluviatile and
jungle life, and ere from these had yet sprung the whole
of the smaller but more highly organized denizens of
nature's common.
Our critic, having now run over the whole series of fos-
sils, summons Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen to express their
opinions against the theory of development. The first
" again and again affirms that the extinct fossil species
were not produced by any continued natural organic law
from other species." His French opponents tried, accord-
ing to the reviewer, to overturn his conclusion by experi-
ments in cross-breeding and the ransacking of ancient
tombs. And they talked contemptuously of la cloture du
siecle de Cuvier ; for which they fall under a reference to
the fable of 'the ass and the dead lion. Now, I disclaim
all responsibility for the experiments and language of the
French theories on this subject. But, while I respect
Cuvier, I must not concede too much even to his opinion.
He was, after all, but a man, with the common liability to
prejudices. I would, with all due reverence for the illus-
trious Baron, remind my reviewer of an opinion which the
former expressed in 1826, that a deluge had occurred
about six thousand years ago, which broke down and made
to disappear the countries which had before been inhabited
by men, and the species of animals with which we are
best acquainted. Ten years after this belief was expressed
by Cuvier, I find Dr. Buckland quietly withdrawing his
adherence to it in the Bridgewater Treatise. At this mo-
ment it is not supported by a single geologist of the least
70
EXPLANATIONS.
repute. May not, then, the Baron Cuvier be wrong also
in his opinion regarding the development of species ? So
much, I trust, may be said without any disparagement to
the author of the Regne Animal. The fact is, that the
erroneous and imperfect ideas of great men often become
an annoyance, from no fault on their part, but only be-
cause the weak and narrow-minded are so apt, afterwards,
to seize upon such ideas, and brandish them in the faces
of advancing truths. For M. Agassiz I likewise entertain
great respect ; but it happens that his liability to error is
equally well established. The doctrines which he per-
sisted for years in maintaining with respect to the con-
stitution and movement of glaciers, are now all but deserted
for the more accurate and philosophical deductions of Pro-
fessor James Forbes. I may, therefore, receive the intel-
ligence which the Neufchatel philosopher brings me re-
garding the fossil fish, but be cautious in accepting as an
infallible dictum what he is pleased to say on the compara-
tively profound doctrine of organic development. Profes-
sor Owen, whose modesty keeps pace with his fame, will
hardly pretend to an infallibility which fails in two such
noted instances. Besides, the difficulties which this great
anatomist and others have found in sanctioning the deve-
lopment theory, chiefly rest in mistaken assumptions with
regard to the constitution of the animal kingdom. It is
impossible, as they say, to make out a genealogy in a line
of orders; but let a fresh naturalist, of equal standing,
judge of the theory, after he has considered the animal
kingdom in the arrangement now suggested, and I feel
assured that its feasibility will receive a more favorable
verdict.
The reviewer, however, would not abate one jot of his
RETRACTATION OF MR. SEDGWICK. 71
opinion, although Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen were all
against him ! If such be the state of his mind regarding
Cuvier, with what face can he condemn St. Hilaire, who
only does that towards the dead lion which our critic would
also do, supposing the dead lion were equally opposed to
his opinion ? The grounds for this strong assurance are
in personal and immediate observation of facts. " We
have examined," says he, " the old records ... in the
spots where nature placed them, and we know their true
historical meaning . . . We have visited in succession
the tombs and charnel-houses of these old times, and we
took with us the clew spun in the fabric of development ;
but we found this clew no guide through these ancient
labyrinths, and, sorely against our will, we were compelled
to snap its thread . . . We now dare affirm that geology,
not seen through the mist of any theory, but taken as a
plain succession of monuments and facts, offers one firm
cumulative argument against the hypothesis of develop-
ment." What first strikes us in this declaration is the
tone in which the writer speaks of his own convictions.
Cuvier, Agassiz, Owen, may all be wrong ; but this wri-
ter cannot. He has seen what he speaks of. Against " a
dogmatical dictation contrary to the sober rules of sound
philosophy" (his own words), there might have surely
been some protection in the necessity of retractation to
which the best geologists are occasionally reduced. For
example, we have Professor Sedgwick, in 1831, undoing a
theory he had formerly embraced :
" We now connect the gravel of the plains with the ele-
vation of the newest system of mountains That
these statements militate against opinions but a few years
sinoe held almost universally among us, cannot be denied.
72
EXPLANATIONS.
But theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent gene-
ralizations of an advancing science, must ever be regarded
but as shifting hypotheses to be modified by every new fact,
till at length they become accordant with all the phenomena
of nature. In retreating, where we have advanced too far,
there is neither compromise of dignity nor loss of strength ;
for in doing this we partake but of the common fortune of
every one who enters on a field of investigation like our
own."
The contrast between the philosophic modesty of this
passage, and the above extract from the Edinburgh re-
viewer, must be very striking. The reader, who has seen
the hollowness of so many of this writer's particular objec-
tions to the development theory, can be little at a loss to
form an estimate of the personal investigations of which
he speaks. He seems to have yet to learn that the neces-
sarily partial investigations which any single geologist
may be able personally to make, can give no such amount
of the requisite knowledge as may be acquired in another
mode of study ; that the intellectual powers and prepara-
tions of the personal inquirer ought also to be known, be-
fore we can set such store even by that light which may
be attained by his examinations. It is not uncommon for
ordinary manners to boast of their knowledge of a coun-
try from having sailed several times to one of its ports,
and for private sentinels to pretend to a superior knowledge
of a great battle, in one detachment of which they hap-
pened to be engaged. Of such boastings and pretensions
I must confess that I am strongly reminded by this writer.
The geological objections to the development theory have
now been discussed, and to the public it must be left to
PHYSIOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS OF DR. CLARK. 73
decide the question, whether palaeontology is favorable or
unfavorable to that scheme. I must not advert to the illus-
trations which the theory derives from physiology, and the
objections which have been made to them. The Edin-
burgh reviewer occupies several of his pages with such
objections, but, fortunately, they need not detain us long,
as they come to little more than this, that he puts trust in
Dr. Clark, of Cambridge, while I have resorted for the
support of my general theory to the views advocated by
other physiologists.* I may say that these views are pre-
* Dr. Whevvell (preface to Indications, Sfc.) joins the reviewer
and others in reprobating the suggestions which have been made in
the Vestiges, with regard to a similarity between certain crystalli-
zations, as the figures produced by frost upon windows, and the
Arbor Diana, to vegetable forms. The logical merits of the re-
viewer's mind are here fully indicated, for what does he set down
as a disproof of these as " traces of secondary means by which the
Almighty deviser might establish" the forms of plants ? that such
crystallizations grow by simple apposition of new matter,- and not
from germs, as actual vegetables do ; the question at issue being
merely, whether the electricity concerned in the crystallization
might not have some similar effect in determining the forms of the
vegetables. I may here remark that 1 am not alone in surmising
some common root for these phenomena. In Leithead's Electricity
(1837), the following passage occurs : — " The form of the route of
free electricity is modified by the medium through which it passes,
and also by the electric state of such medium, or of that of the rela-
tive electrical condition of two bodies between which it is trans-
mitted. If the medium through which it passes possesses a very
inferior conducting power, it is obvious that a certain momentum
must be requisite to enable the fluid to force its passage to a given
distance, and there will be a point at which the momentum of the
fluid and the resistance of the body will exactly counterbalance each
other; but so soon as the electricity has again accumulated to a
sufficient degree to overcome the resistance, it will again force its
way in another direction, until it arrives at another point of equili-
74 EXPLANATIONS.
sented in my book as correctly as it was possible for me
to give them, who am nothing but a general student: in
one instance I have employed the language of a popular
treatise (Dr. Lord's) — ridiculed by our reviewer as a book
of no authority — merely because the ideas were there pre-
sented in a peculiarly intelligible form. The general aim
was, I can honestly declare, to convey the doctrine of the
epigenesis of animals, as M. Serres calls it, as an illustra-
tion of my subject, considering myself entitled to do so by
the position which it has attained in the world. It is, of
brium. In this way, we may readily see the modus operandi of the
electric fluid in imparting regular forms to bodies ; and it is highly
probable that its action in this respect extends to the vegetable
kingdom, and perhaps operates even on animals, from the time
in which they exist in the embryo state. . . . Another fact in
support of the opinion, that the distinctive forms of bodies are pro-
duced by electrical action, is, that crystals, and the twigs and leaves
of vegetables, all terminate in points or sharp edges, so that the
electrical action can proceed no further in increasing the growth,
or, in other words, in propelling fresh portions of matter for the
extension of the plant, or the crystal, beyond the pointed or edged
termination." In a letter of Mr. Crosse to Mr. Leithead, it is stated
that, in one of his experiments, there grew, in the inside of an elec-
trified jar filled with hydro-sulphuret of potash, a mineral fungus,
three-fourths of an inch in length and one-fourth of an inch in
diameter, " m the shape of a common trumpet-mouthed fungus,
which is found on trees." " In one experiment," says Mr.
Weekes, in a recent letter to myself, " a singularly beautiful elec-
tro-vegetation was produced, a forest in miniature, which, by aid
of a good lens, presented many extraordinary appearances, and con-
tinued to interest me during many months." It may suit the re-
viewer and others to scoff at such " resemblances;" but scoffing
will not annul, in my mind, the apprehension that there is here
some relation of a very interesting kind, the investigation of which
may yet give us a deeper insight than we now enjoy in the mysteries
of organic being.
EMBRY0TIC REPRESENTATIONS.
75
course, unfortunate for this, as it is for many other doc-
trines, that it should have an opponent ; but this circum-
stance is fortunately, on the other hand, no adequate
ground of condemnation in the judgment of third parties.
I leave, then, the general tenor of this portion of my re-
viewer's objections, with the remark, that for the one
authority which he has called into court, it would be easy
to summon many as good on the other side ; for instance,
Harvey, Grew, Lister, and Meckel. Our critic's own
favorite authority — Mr. Owen — would give good evidence ;
see his Letters on the Invertebrated Animals, where he says
that man's embryotic metamorphoses would not be less
striking than those of the butterfly, if subjected like them
to observation — and then adds, that the human embryo is
first vermiform, next stamped with the characters of the
apodal fish, afterwards indicative of the enaliosaur, and so
forth. There is another most respectable English physi-
ologist— Dr. Roget — who, in his Bridgewater Treatise, ex-
plicitly says, " that the animals which occupy the highest
stations in each series possess, at the commencement of
their existence, forms exhibiting a marked resemblance to
those presented in the permanent condition of the lowest
animals of the same series ; and that, during the progress
of their development, they assume in succession the cha-
racters of each tribe, corresponding to their consecutive
order in the ascending chain." It is to what has been
thus spoken of by such excellent men — what was, I be-
lieve, first hinted at by Harvey, and afterwards shadowed
forth by John Hunter — that this writer applies the appella-
tion of " a monstrous scheme, from first to last nothing but
a pile of wildly gratuitous hypotheses."
This reviewer and others have been eager to point out
76
EXPLANATIONS.
that " no anatomist has observed the shadow of any change
assimilating the nascent embryo to any of the radiata, mol-
lusca, or articulata. Thus are three whole classes [divi-
sions] of the animal kingdom, passed over without any cor-
responding fetal type, and in defiance of the law of de-
velopment." The writer here states what is not true, if
any faith is to be placed in one of the first authorities of
the age, and one upon which he himself depends ; for have
we not seen Mr. Owen on the last page affirming that the
human embryo is first vermiform ? — this meaning the form
of the worms, a portion of the class Annelides, in one of
these lower divisions. That all these divisions or sub-
kingdoms are not represented in the human embryo is an
objection perfectly visionary, for it is not necessary that
all should be involved in the ancestry, and therefore analo-
gies to all are not to be looked for. It may be said, then,
there is no true difficulty in this quarter.
Perhaps no part of the arguments for the development
theory has been more misapprehended, or misrepresented,
than this. It is continually said, that the embryo, at any
of its particular stages, is not in reality the animal repre-
sented by that stage. The Edinburgh reviewer remarks,
with regard to the fish stage, " Were the embryo of a
mammal thrown off at that time into water (of its own tem-
perature), it could not support life for a moment." The
brain of a child in the seventh month is also said to be not
the brain of any of the inferior animals, but a true human
brain. The truth is, no one ever pretended that there was
such an identity. It is only said that there is a resem-
blance in general character between the particular embry-
otic stage of being, and the mature condition and form of
the appropriate inferior animal. The particular adapta-
GERMS NOT IDENTICAL. 77
tions, and the character of vital maturity, are all wanting,
and therefore it is that the embryo could not live, as the
inferior animal represented, if separated from the parent,
and really is not that inferior animal.
It may be well, before leaving this part of the subject,
to advert to a special charge which this writer, and at least
one other,* have brought forward : it is, that I assume, not
only that the organic germs of all creatures are alike, but
that they are identical. The Edinburgh Review brings a
contradiction to this proposition from Dr. Clark. It is
wholly unnecessary, for no such assumption was ever made
by me. The phrase used in the book was, " Its primary
positions [meaning the doctrines of embryonic development]
are that the embryos of all animals are not distinguishably
different from each other ;" which is a very different pro-
position. In several other instances, propositions are thus
misrepresented to afford the glory of a visionary refutation.
For example : the idea that there being light in the planets,
any inhabitants of these orbs may be presumed to have
eyes, as eyes bear a relation to light, is met by him very
gravely with the fact, left for him to discover, that animals
have eyes before they are born !
I have now reviewed the vestiges of creation, presented
in both the geological and physiological records, the former
presenting memorials of the actual progression of species,
in nearly such a conformity with the general arrange-
ments of the organic kingdoms as we might expect in the
present state of the science, and the latter affording us
proofs — proofs, at least, satisfactory to many of the best
anatomists of our age — of a plan of individual development,
* North American Review, April, 1845.
78
EXPLANATIONS.
which may be called the living picture of the advance of
species, during the vast ages chronicled by the sedimentary
rocks. A third series of vestiges now remains for consi-
deration— namely, those which hint at originations and
modifications of organic beings in the current era.
The objections to the occasional production of organic
beings, otherwise than ex ovo, do not appear to have been
softened by the publication of my former volume. All
reviewers, with the single exception of the British and
Foreign Medical Review, have intimated their continued
scepticism on this point. The experiment of Professor
Schulze, of Berlin, with decaying organic matter floating
in a flask to which common air was admitted, after passing
through sulphuric acid, thereby being deprived of all ani-
mal admixtures — an experiment which ended in the non-
production of any animalcules or mould — is pointed to as
conclusive. Explanations more or less plausible have also
been offered for the origin of the entozoa, the parasites of
civilisation, the pimelodes cyclopum, etc. I should fear to
weary the reader with a new discussion of all these par-
ticulars : for the sake of brevity, let me meet the call which
the opponents of the development theory usually make, to
give it the direct proof which would be afforded by show-
ing one instance, either of the origin of life or the transmu-
tation of species.
The objection of the Edinburgh reviewer, to the alleged
transmutation of oats into rye, is that he believes it a fable.
This is the opinion of one person, advanced without fact
or argument to support it. Let us see, on the other hand,
what a greater authority on botanical subjects than he —
namely, Dr. Lindley — has stated on the same subject.
" At the request," says this learned person, " of the Mar-
SPECIES A TEP.M, NOT A FACT.
79
qliis of Bristol, the Reverend Lord Arthur Hervey, in the
year 1843, sowed a handful of oats, treated thefh in the
manner recommended, by continually stopping the flower-
ing stems, and the produce, in 1844, has been for the most
part ears of a very slender barley, having much the ap-
pearance of rye, with a little wheat, and some oats ; sam-
ples of which are, by the favor of Lord Bristol, now before
us." The learned writer then adverts to the " extraordi-
nary, but certain fact, that in orchidaceous plants, forms
just as different as wheat, barley, rye, and oats, have been
proved by the most rigorous evidence, to be accidental
variations of one common form, brought about no one
knows how, but before our eyes, and rendered permanent
by equally mysterious agency. Then, says Reason, if
they occur in orchidaceous plants, why should they not
also occur in corn plants 1 for it is not likely that such
vagaries will be confined to one little group in the vegeta-
ble kingdom ; it is more rational to believe them to be a
part of the general system of creation . . . How can we
be sure, that wheat, rye, oats, and barley, are not all ac-
cidental off-sets from some unsuspected species ?"* The
reader will now be partly able to judge of the value of the
unsupported dictum of the reviewer.
There are many other facts that throw a strong light on
transmutation, both of plants and animals. So far from
there being any decisive proof against this theory, there is
no settled conclusion at this moment amongst naturalists,
as to what constitutes a species. " There is," says Pro-
fessor Henslow, " no law whatever hitherto established, by
which the limits of variation to a given species can be satis-
* Gardener's Chronicle, August, 1844.
80
EXPLANATIONS.
factorily assigned, and until some such law be aiscovcred,
we cannot expect precision in the details of systematic
botany."* " We have agreed," says Bicheno, " that a
species shall be that distinct form, originally so created,
and producing, by certain laws of generation, others like
itself. There is this inconvenience attending the use of it
by naturalists, that it assumes as a fact, that which, in the
present state of science, is in many cases a fit subject of
inquiry ; namely, that species, according to our definition,
do exist throughout nature. It is too convenient a term to
be dispensed with, even as an assumption ; only care should
he taken that we do not accept the abstract term-for the fact." ^
Mr. Westwood, speaking of insects, says, " In very exten-
sive genera, the distinctions of species are so minute, that it
requires the most practised eye to separate them ; and,
indeed, there are some groups, the species of which are so
intricately blended together, that no two entomologists are
agreed as to their distinctness." According to Mr. Halde-
man, author of a learned work on the fresh-water mollusks
of America, " There are distinct species in that class —
among the Unionidse, for example [and this is a remark
applicable to other departments of the animal kingdom],
actually differing less from each other than the known va-
rieties of certain variable species, which a Lamarkian
might suppose to be of so recent an origin, as not to have
yet become settled in the possession of their proper diag-
nostic characters. Indeed, notwithstanding the assumption
to the contrary, by authors who have little practical ac-
quaintance with the details of natural history, the proper
discrimination between species and variety, is one of the
* Magazine of Zoology and Botany, i., 116.
t Linnsean Transactions, xv., 482.
TRANSMUTATION OF PLANTS.
81
greatest difficulties which the naturalist has to encounter ;
and he who is successful in this department is entitled to a
rank which comparatively few can attain."*
Of the extent to which modifications may be carried by
palpable external conditions, I may now supply a few il-
lustrations. It is well known that fungi and lichens attain
to very different appearances in different situations, in con-
formity with different conditions. Fries, we are told,
'■' asserts that out of the different states of one species
(telephora sulphurea), more than eight distinct genera had
been constructed by different authors. It would seem,
then, that the absolute number of species among the fungi
is not nearly so great as has been usually supposed ; and
that the kind produced by a decomposing infusion, or a bed
of decaying solid matter, will depend as much upon the
influence of the material employed, as upon the germ itself
which is the subject of i'2."f
Among the questions proposed by the Academy of Sci-
ences at Haarlem, in 1839, was one upon the following
subject — "According to some botanists, Algaj of a very
simple structure, placed under favorable circumstances,
develope and change into different plants, belonging to
genera much more elevated in the scale of organic being ;
although these same algae, in the absence of such favorable
circumstances, would be fertile, and reproduce their primi-
tive form.":}: I would ask if this is a point as yet settled
in the negative. The original of our cabbage is well
known to be a trailing sea-side plant, entirely different
from the cabbage in appearance. The cardoon and arti-
* Boston Journal of Natural History,
t Carpenter's Physiology, p. 62.
\ Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History, il, 448.
5*
82
EXPLANATIONS.
choke are now admitted to be one, and Mr. Darwin was
assured by an intelligent farmer that he has seen, in a
deserted garden, the latter plant relapsing into the former.
It is well known, that when fresh-water mollusks are
exposed for a little time to an influx of the sea, those which
can survive the change assume considerably different
characters. In a fresh-water tertiary formation of the
island of Cos, Professor Edward Forbes and Lieutenant
Spratt found various fresh-water molluscan shells — palu-
dina, neretina, melanopsis, etc. — which had passed through
surprising modifications in the course of three successive
groups of deposits, supposed to have been marked by in-
creasing influxes of sea- water. " The lowermost species
of each genus were smooth, those of the centre partially
plicated, and those of the upper part strongly and regularly
ribbed."* This was apparently a retrogression to marine
types. The differences in the three cases were greater
than those which naturalists usually consider as grounds
of specific distinction.
Surely there are here ample evidences of species, or what
are usually regarded as such, being variable under changed
conditions. It will be said, these changes are all mere
variations of specific forms, and the facts do nothing but
show that that has been called species which is only va-
riety. But where is this to have its limits ? If the cab-
bage and sea-plant are to be now regarded as one species,
it seems to me that we have to go very little further, to
come to the lines of successive forms or stirpes, which my
hypothesis suggests. This view becomes the more striking
when we remember that any variations which we now see,
* Report of Proceedings of the British Association, 1845.— Lite-
rary Gazette.
SIVATHSKIBM AND GIRAFFE.
S3
lake place within a space of time extremely small in com-
parison with those which geology allows for its phenomena.
" Although," says Mr. Haldeman, " we may not be able,
artificially, to produce a change beyond a definite point, it
would be a hasty inference to suppose that a physical
agent acting gradually for ages, could not carry the varia-
tion a step or two further."
I may here advert to a fallacy which has been one of
the principal difficulties in the way of the supposition of
every kind of transmutation. It is always taken for
granted that the parental animal must be extinguished in
consequence of the change. Thus we find a suggestion
by M. St. Hilaire that the modern giraffe may be a modifi-
cation of the sivatherium of the Indian tertiaries, met very
complacently by a reference to the discovery of Dr. Fal-
coner, that in these tertiaries, the giraffe is associated with
the sivatherium. So also, the suggestion that the hare of
Siberia, with its curtailed ears, shorter hind legs, and ab-
sence of tail, may be a modification of the ordinary hare,
has been answered by Professor Owen, with a reference to
the fact, that the tailless hare (Lagomys Spelseus) is found
as early in the tertiaries as any species of the true genus,
Lepus.* Now it is entirely an assumption on the part of
those who oppose the transmutation theory, that the origi-
nal animal shall perish when the new one is produced ;
and therefore the difficulty is entirely of their own making.
The probable fact is that the modification takes place in an
offshoot of the original tribe, which has removed into a dif-
ferent set of circumstances, these circumstances being the
cause of the change : thus there is no need to presume that
* British Fossil Mammalia and Birds, p. 215.
84
EXPLANATIONS.
the original tribe is at all affected by any such modifica-
tion. The case is precisely analogous to that of a colony.
We see, for example, the New Englanders change from
the original English type, without any necessary effect
upon the parent stock. Just so might the giraffe be a
changed sivatherium, and yet the sivatherium continue to
exist. And in point of fact, there are many animals now
living along with their supposed modified descendants.
Unless, therefore, it could be proved that the supposed
descendant actually preceded in date the animal from which
it was said to have sprung, objections of this nature can be
of no force. The reader will understand that I only ad-
duce the instances of the sivatherium and hare for the
sake of illustration, and without undertaking to show that
those animals have actually had such modified descendants
as may have been attributed to them. I would entreat
the candid opponent of the transmutation theory to review
the subject in the improved light in which it appears, with
this most gratuitous assumption set aside.
With regard to the origination of new life from inorga-
nic elements, the Broomfield experiment would be quite
decisive, if any evidence could be admitted for what men
are unwilling to believe. The Edinburgh reviewer writes
two pages which appear to put the alleged fact much out
of countenance ; and yet it is true that ridicule, which
always proceeds upon assumption, forms their entire com-
position. He states that specimens of the insect were sent
to Paris, where they set a whole conclave of philosophers
a-laughing, because they were found to contain ova. It
did not occur to him that independent generation is what
the development theory presumes of every animal family
which may have ever had an origin otherwise than ex ovo.
THE ACARUS CROSSII.
85
Other specimens were sent to London, but there their fate
was sealed by their being found to be not a new species,
but one then abundant in the country. These circum-
stances, with a few empty jests, satisfy the critic that there
was no independent generation in the case. Against such
a conclusion, proceeding upon mere supposition, I adduce
careful experiment. During the last three years, Mr.
Weekes, of Sandwich, has continued to subject solutions to
electric action, and invariably found insects produced in
these instances, while they as invariably failed to appear
where the electric action was not employed, but every
other condition fulfilled. The rigid care taken in these
experiments to exclude vitiating circumstances, gives them
a high claim to notice, and T therefore present, as an ap-
pendix, two letters from Mr. Weekes upon the subject.
They cannot fail to be read with interest, and the more so,
as they exhibit a man pursuing the investigation of an im-
portant natural fact under the most discouraging circum-
stances. If this new presentment of the Acarus Crossii
shall still excite ridicule, I can only regret the mood of
mind from which that ridicule arises ; but the opposite
party must excuse my attaching no importance "to any-
thing besides fact and argument. These alleged pheno-
mena are open, like all others, to the test of counter-expe-
riment. Let them be subjected to it in the most rigid
manner, and set aside in the case of failure. But to meet
them merely with scoffs and jests, or at the most, certain
wholly gratuitous assumptions as to a possibly vai'ious
cause, is not philosophical, and therefore deserves no con-
sideration.
Having thus presented vestiges of laws for the origina-
tion and modification of organic being, I must protest
86
EXPLANATIONS.
against proof of the existence of such laws being held in-
dispensable to the development theory. The earth, we
see, has been peopled for ages before man began to observe
nature or chronicle his observations. The organic world
attained what appears to us completeness, in remote ages.
It is a thing done, as individual reproduction is done at the
birth of the new creature. We are not, therefore, to ex-
pect conspicuous examples of either a new origin of life or
a modification of species at the present day. Though,
therefore, not one unequivocal instance of such origin and
such modification could be presented, it would say nothing
positive against the hypothesis that species originated, and
made a series of advances in general organization, by the
efficacy of law, in times long antecedent to our historical
period. We should still have to say that the evidence of
such phenomena was to be looked for elsewhere, — namely,
in the history of the progress of organic being as chroni-
cled for us by geology, and in the history which physiology
affords us of the progress of the individual embryo. See-
ing, then, that plants and animals came into existence gra-
dually, in the course of a vast period of time, and in a
succession conforming generally to their grades in organi-
zation, and the stages through which the embryo of one of
the highest has to pass before it attains maturity, we might
say that we had seen all that could well be expected in
the case, and enough to establish a strong probability for
the development theory. Nevertheless, it may be admit-
ted that any evidence of the continued existence of the
creative and modifying laws, is still desirable, for the sake
of corroboration. And such is the light in which I regard
the facts which we possess regarding variations of type,
and the production of some of the lower plants and ani-
VESTIGES OF CREATIVE LAWS.
*1
mals by means independent of generation. As in the pro-
gress of an individual being, even after birth, we see the
laws which preside over reproduction operating still in a
faint degree in the defective nutrition which stunts, and
the favoring conditions which advance and glorify, the
state of infancy and youth, so might we expect that the
laws which originally spread the vegetable and animal
kingdoms over the earth, would still, perhaps, be traceable
as faintly at work, especially in those lower families where
life and the modifiable quality are most abundantly im-
parted. The evidence for the existence of such laws is
patent to the exact observation which will give it philoso-
phical certainty, and to such observation I trust it will, in
time, be subjected. Meanwhile, I claim its being received
as a provisional aid to the theory of development.
Thus closes my review of the objections which have
been made to the evidences for an organic creation by
law. Such a mode of that creation was, I said at the first,
rendered likely by the manifestation of a presidency of
law both in the physical arrangements of the universe and
in the constitution of our own minds. It seemed to me
that, with evidences of law in these things, we had a
strong probability established that law had been the mode
of the divine working in the whole system revealed to our
senses and reason, throughout all ages of its existence.
And I believed that we were called upon, not to grasp at
every objection to this idea which could be conjured out
of the darkness of our imperfect knowledge, as if to save
us from a disrelished conclusion, but rather to look with
candid minds into nature, and endeavor to discover in
what we do know the traces of such an origin of organi-
88
EXPLANATIONS.
zation as might harmonize with the conceptions forced
upon us from other quarters; trusting that there never
could be any disadvantage from embracing that view
which the balance of reason might show to be the nearest
to truth. The question is, to which view does the balance
now incline ? Whether is it most likely that the Deity
produced Being and its many-staged theatre in the manner
of order or law, or by any different mode of a more arbi-
trary character ; whether, consequently, are we to regard
him as ruling the affairs of the world in the manner of an
invariable order or otherwise 1 I say likely — because we
are not to expect on any such questions the absolute de-
monstration which attends a mathematical problem or an
unchallengeable writing. We must be content if we only
can see a preponderance of reasons for regarding the uni-
verse and its Author in one or other of those lights. To
be prepared for a decision upon this question, it is proper
that the reader should be presented with a sketch of the
theory opposed to that of universal order.
When we set about describing this system, we are
struck by finding it vague and unsteady, varying with
every degree of intelligence in its votaries and every addi-
tion made to science. The uneducated man regards the
whole system of the world as resulting from, and depend-
ing upon, the immediate working and guidance of an
almighty being who acts in each case as may seem to him
most meet, exactly as human creatures do. Persons of
intelligence, again, usually admit a system of general
laws, but for the most part entertain it under great reser-
vations, or in connection with views totally inconsistent
with it. We find Dr. Clark, for instance, admitting a
course of nature as the "will of God r reducing certain
DR. WHEWELL's PALjETIOLOGICAL sciences. 89
effects in a regular and uniform manner," but, this will
" being arbitrary [an assumption, as far as natural means
of knowledge are concerned], is, he says, as easy to be
altered at any time as to be preserved."
Others cut off particular provinces of nature as excep-
tions from the plan of constant order. Whatever part is
dubious or obscure, to mankind generally or to themselves
in particular, there they rear the torn standard of the arbi-
trary system of divine rule. Human volitions form such
a region to many who know not that Quetelet has reduced
these to mathematical formulae, and that one of our own
most popular divines has written a Bridgewater Treatise,
to show the predominance of natural law over mind, as a
proof of the existence and wisdom of God. Some who
give up this domain to law, find footing in other depart-
ments of nature upon which science has not as yet poured
any clear light. We shall presently see by what weak
arguments such exceptions are maintained. Meanwhile,
it must be noted as important, that all is uncertainty on
this side of the question — a strong presumption, were there
no other, against it.
One of the most remarkable reservations made of late
years from the system of invariable order is that presented
in Dr. Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. Ad-
mitting that nature, as revealed to our senses, is a system
of causation, this writer halts when he comes to consider
the origin of language and of arts, the origin of species
and formation of globes. These he calls palsetiological
sciences, because, in his opinion, we have to seek for an an-
cient and different class of causes, as affecting them, from
any which are now seen operating. " In no palsetiological
sciences," says he, " has man been able to arrive at a
90
EXPLANATIONS.
beginning which is homogeneous with the known course
of events. We can, in such sciences, often go very far
back, determine many of the remote circumstances of the
past series of events, ascend to a point which seems to be
near their origin, and limit the hypothesis respecting the
origin itself; but philosophers have never demonstrated,
and, so far as we can judge, probably never will be able
to demonstrate, what was the primitive state of things from
which the progressive course of the world took its first
departure. In all these paths of research, when we travel
far backwards, the aspect of the earlier portions becomes
very different from that of the advanced part on which we
now stand ; but in all cases the path is lost in obscurity as
it is traced backwards to its starting point : it becomes not
only invisible, but unimaginable ; it is not only an inter-
ruption, but an abyss which interposes itself between us
and any intelligible beginning of things."*
Here, we have the view of exceptions which is enter-
tained by one of the chief writers of the day, and the
superior of one of our greatest academical institutions.
The professional position of Dr. Whewell may be held to
imply that we should receive from him a view at once
leaning to the philosophical, and accommodated as far as
possible to the prepossessions expected in a large class of
persons. It is remarkable, but not surprising, how weak
is the banner which he has raised to stop our course to-
wards a theory of universal arrangement by ordinary
natural law.
The necessity alleged by Dr. Whewell for a different
* Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, apud Indications of the
Creator.
DR. WHEWELL'S VIEWS CONDEMNED.
9J
set of causes in the early times of our globe, and with
regard to the formation of that globe, is, at the very first,
liable to strong suspicion, as reminding us much of that
well known propensity of nations to fill up the first chap-
ters of their history with mythic heroes and giants. The
subjects of investigation are remote from common research ;
they are not, and never could have been, chronicled in the
manner of modern facts ; we are in the regions of the
comparatively unknown — hence, something more magnifi-
cent or impressive than ordinary must be supposed. Such
is the reasoning, or rather no-reasoning. The point at
which extraordinary causes have to be supposed is evi-
dently quite arbitrary, resting exactly on the limits of the
knowledge existing at any time, and always flying further
and further back, in proportion as our knowledge increases.
Had Dr. Whewell been writing fifty years ago, he would
of course have included among his palsetiological sci-
ences, the formation of strata, and the intrusions of the
granitic and trappean among the aqueous rocks, which in-
genuity has since explained by existing causes ; — for
there is not a single argument for his considering the for-
mation of globes and origin of species as palsetiological,
which would not have applied with equal force to these
phenomena before the days of Pallas and Hutton. Against
a theory of mere assumption — a reasoning from ignorance
to ignorance — such considerations form serious objections.
But let us come to closer argument. Let us inquire how
the idea of a different set of causes for the more important
of these phenomena, agrees with such exact knowledge as
we have attained respecting them.
" According to the nebular hypothesis," says Dr.
Whewell, "the formation of this our system of sun
92
EXPLANATIONS.
planets, and satellites, was a process of the same kind aa
those which are still going on in the heavens
But . . the uniformitarian doctrine on this subject
rests on most unstable foundations. We have as yet only
very vague and imperfect reasonings to show that by such
condensation a material system such as ours could result ;
and the introduction of organized beings into such a ma-
terial system is utterly out of the reach of our philosophy.
Here . . therefore, we are led to regard the present
order of the world as pointing towards an origin altogether
of a different kind from anything which our material
science can grasp." Because the nebular hypothesis
rests on unstable foundations, and " nothing has been
pointed out in the existing order of things which has any
resemblance or analogy, of any valid kind, to that crea-
tive energy which must be exerted in the production of
new species," — therefore, according to Dr. Whewell, we
are " driven to assume events not included in the course of
nature" as having formerly taken place. Such is his rea-
soning. Now let us call to mind a few of the laws ascer-
tained to have been concerned in the cosmical arrange-
ments, leaving for the meantime all that is doubtful in the
nebular hypothesis entirely out of view. The proportion
of the equatorial to the polar diameter of the earth is ex-
actly what a fluid mass rotating at such a rate of speed
would assume any day we might try the experiment.
The relative distances of the planets have been deter-
mined by the relation of two laws of matter, so thoroughly
patent in their working to modern observation, that a
mathematician could ascertain this their result and an-
nounce it from his closet, although he never had heard of
a planetary system in which it was exemplified. There
DR. WHEWELL's VIEWS CONDEMNED. 93
is, surely, here anything but a likelihood that different
causes from those now existing and acting, were the im-
mediate means of producing the cosmical arrangements.
May we not rather say that, whatever may have been the
details of the formation of globes, we possess ample proof
that it was a phenomenon evolved by virtue of exactly
the same system of order which we see still operating
upon earth ? As to the origin of organic beings, our
knowledge of geology comes to precisely a similar effect.
Admitting that we see not now any such fact as the pro-
duction of new species, we at least know that, while such
facts were occurring upon earth, there were associated
phenomena in progress, of a character perfectly ordinary.
For example, when the earth received its first fishes, sand-
stone and limestone were forming in the manner exem-
plified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of
Sir James Hall : basaltic columns rose for the future won-
der of man, according to the principle which Dr. Gregory
Watt showed in operation before the eyes of our fathers ;
and hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with crystals,
precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric ac-
tion, as shown within the last few years by Crosse and
Becquerel. The seas obeyed the impulse of gentle
breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms as seas of the
present day are doing ; the trees grew as now by favor
of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in
bad ; this, while the animals above fishes were yet to be
created. The movements of the sea, the meteorological
agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality
of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most
abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of sim-
ply natural order, throughout the whole of the ages which
94
EXPLANATIONS.
saw reptiles enter in their various forms upon the sea and
land. It was about the time of the first mammals, that
the forest of the Dirt Bed was sinking in natural ruin
amidst the sea sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have
been doing for several centuries upon the coast of Eng-
land. In short, all the common operations of the physical
world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that
order which we still see governing them, while the supposed
extraordinary causes were in sequisition for the develop-
ment of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There
surely hence arises a strong presumption against any such
causes. It becomes much more likely that the latter
phenomena were evolved in the manner of law also, and
that we only dream of extraordinary causes here, as men
once dreamt of a special action of deity in every change
of wind and the results of each season, merely because
they did not know the laws by which the events in ques-
tion were evolved.
The writer of the critique in the Edinburgh Review is
another representative of opinion on this subject whose
ideas are worthy of notice. These ideas are not very
clear, but I shall endeavor to gather them from the various
parts of his paper where they are expressed. He says
of certain animals (p. 60) — " They were not called into
being by any law of nature, but by a power above na-
ture." If he means by a law of nature something inde-
pendent of the Deity, I entirely concur with him. Most
unquestionably, the animals resulted from a power, which
is above nature, in the sense of its being the Author of
nature. He adds — " They were created by the hand of
God, and adapted to the conditions of the period." If he
here means a special exertion of the powers of the Deity,
GENERAL VIEWS OF EDINBURGH REVIEWER.
95
having a regard to special conditions, we part company,
for my object is to show that animals were indebted for
their gradations of advance to a law generally impressed
by the Deity upon matter, and that their external pecu-
liarities are owing immediately to the agency of those
very conditions to which they are supposed to have been
adapted. I contend that there was no more need for
a special exertion to produce (for instance) mammalia,
than there is for one to carry a human foetus on from the
sixth to the seventh, or from the eighth to the ninth month.
I had remarked in no irreverent spirit, but the contrary,
that the supposition of frequent special exertion anthropo-
morphises the Deity ; I find a similar idea expressed by
one who will not be suspected of irreverence on such a
subject, the pious and amiable Doddridge — " When we
assert," says he, " a perpetual divine agency, we readily
acknowledge that matters are so contrived as not to need
a divine interposition in a different manner from that in
which it had been constantly exerted. And it is most
evident that an unremitting energy, displayed in such cir-
cumstances, greatly exalts our idea of God, instead of de-
pressing it ; and therefore, by the way, is so much the
more likely to be true." The Edinburgh reviewer denies
that there is any lowering of the divine character in sup-
posing a system of special exertion. " The law of crea-
tion," he says, " is the law of the Divine will, and nothing
else besides. . . The fiat of the Almighty was suffi-
cient at all times, and for all the phenomena of the uni-
verse, material and moral."
" It may be true," he continues, " that in the concep-
tion of the Divine mind there is no difference between the
creation of dead matter and its unbending laws, and the
96
EXPLANATIONS.
creation of organic structures subservient to all the func-
tions of individual life. But such views are, and must be,
above our comprehension. . . Each organic structure
is a miracle as incomprehensible as the creation of a plan-
etary system ; and each structure is a microcosm related
to all other worlds within the ken of sense ; yet governed
by laws and revolving cycles within itself, and implied in
the very conditions of its existence. What know we of
the God of nature (we speak only of natural means), ex-
cept through the faculties he has given us, rightly em-
ployed on the materials around us 1 In this we rise to a
conception of material inorganic laws, in beautiful har-
mony and adjustment ; and they suggest to us the con-
ception of infinite power and wisdom. In like manner we
rise to a conception of organic laws — of means (often
almost purely mechanical, as they seem to us, and their
organic functions well comprehended) adapted to an end,
— and that end only the well-being of a creature endowed
with sensation and volition. Thus we rise to a concep-
tion both of Divine power and Divine goodness ; and we
are constrained to believe, not merely that all material law
is subordinate to His will, but that he has also (in the way
he allows us to see His works) so exhibited the attributes
of His will, as to show himself to the mind of man as a
personal and superintending God, concentrating his will
on every atom of the universe." The reviewer then cen-
sures the language used in rny book with respect to the
idea of special creative efforts. " Does not our author,"
says he, " see that he binds the Divinity (on his dismal
material scheme) in chains of fatalism as firmly as the
Homeric gods were bound in the imagination of the blind
old poet ? . . The material system may end in down-
GENERAL VIEWS OF EDINBURGH REVIEWER.
97
right atheism ; or, if not, it stops short in the undeviating
sequence of second causes. . . Our view, on the con-
trary, sees, from one end of the scale to the other, the ma-
nifestation of a great principle of creation external to mat-
ter— of final cause, proved by organic structures created
in successive times, and adapted to changing conditions of
the earth. It therefore gives us a personal and superin-
tending God who careth for his creatures."
If such be the best view of the opposite theory which a
clever scholar and a man of science of the present day can
give, that theory must certainly be regarded as in a very
unpromising condition. He is, we see, for fiats or effort
adapted to special conditions. These may be, in the di-
vine conception, identical with natural laws or the system
of order ; but we cannot comprehend it. It is not given
to our faculties to understand a matter so profound. Im-
mediately after, he informs us that we have only these
faculties to look to for information on this very subject ;
and they tell us — what ? — that the world is a system of
law ! law, however, subordinate to the divine will. Sure-
ly, if our faculties cannot comprehend the point above
stated, they must be equally unable to pronounce deci-
sively upon points so abstruse as law being subordinate to
will, and the attributes of that will showing us the Deity
as a personal and superintending God. Were controver-
sialists entitled thus to assume that the human faculties
can pronounce upon one subject in their own way, but are
struck powerless on approaching another, tending to an
opposite conclusion, there would, of course, be an end of
all argument. But even that exercise of the faculties
which the reviewer admits of for his own purpose, by no
means goes to the conclusion at which he arrives. He
98
EXPLANATIONS.
refers but to a small portion of the divine works, when he
speaks of " organic structures created in successive times
and adapted to the changing conditions of the earth." He
cannot be permitted to assume that he has proved these to
have been produced by special fiats or any other mode of
special exertion, " in conformity with changed conditions:"
on the contrary, his proposition is disjiroved, for we hear
in many instances of conditions suitable for new beings,
countless ages before the suitable beings make their ap-
pearance, showing that such was not the principle to which
we are solely to look for the genesis of animals. But,
even though he were more successful on this point, he
would still be required to show his theory of fiats, in har-
mony with a system, the most important facts of which
appear, on the contrary, to have taken their present forms
and arrangements under the immediate agency of the
" Unremitting Energy." As to results which may flow
from any particular view which reason may show as the
best supported, I must firmly protest against any assumed
title in an opponent to pronounce what these are. The
first object is to ascertain truth. No truth can be deroga-
tory to the presumed fountain of all truth. The deroga-
tion must lie in the erroneous construction which a weak
human creature puts upon the truth. And practically it
is the true infidel state of mind which prompts apprehen-
sion regarding any fact of nature, or any conclusion of
sound argument.
The ingenious Agassiz is equally disposed with Dr.
Whewell and the Edinburgh Reviewer to except some
part of nature as a domain for special intervention ; but
he wishes the limits of that domain to be rigidly examined,
and reprobates the idea that such inquiries are beyond our
VIEWS OF M. AGASSIZ.
99
province. " If," says he, " it is an obligation on science
to proclaim the intervention of a divine power in the de-
velopment of the whole of nature, and if it is to that power
alone that we must ascribe all things, it is not the less
incumbent on science to ascertain what is the influence
which physical forces, left to themselves, exercise in all
natural phenomena, and what is the part of direct action
which we must attribute to the supreme being, in the
revolutions to which nature has been subjected. . . .
It is now time for naturalists to occupy themselves like- .
wise, in their domain, in inquiring within what limits we
can recognize the traces of a <livine interposition, and
within what limits the phenomena take place in conse-
quence of a state of things immutably established from the
beginning of the creation. Let it not be said that it is not
given to man to sound these depths : the knowledge he has
acquired of so many hidden mysteries in past ages, pro-
mises more extended revelations. It is an error to which
the mind, from a natural inclination to indolence, allows
itself too easily to incline, to believe impossible what it
would take some trouble to investigate. We generally
would impose limits to our faculties, rather than increase
their range by their exercise ; and the history of the sci-
ences is present to tell us, that there are few of the great
truths now recognized, which have not been treated as chi-
merical and blasphemous before they were demonstrated."*
Where men are so much perplexed between two oppo-
site principles, led by science in the one direction and
drawn by intellectual indolence or timidity in the other, it
is not surprising to find them expressing opinions wholly
* Jameson's Journal, 1842.
EXPLANATIONS.
contradictory. Sir John Herschel some years ago an*
nounced views strictly conformable to those subsequently
taken of organic creation in my book. " For my part,"
said he, " I cannot but think it an inadequate conception
of the Creator, to assume it as granted that his combina-
tions are exhausted upon any one of the theatres of their
former exercise, though, in this, as in all his other works,
we are led, by all analogy, to suppose that he operates
through a series of intermediate causes, and that, in con-
sequence, the origination of fresh species, could it ever come
under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural, in con-
tradistinction to a miraculous process, — although we perceive
no indications of any process actually in progress which is
likely to issue in such a result." In his address to the
British Association at Cambridge (1845), he said, with
respect to my hypothesis of the first step of organic creation
— " The transition from an inanimate crystal to a globule
capable of such endless organic and intellectual develop-
ment, is as great a step — as unexplained a one — as un-
intelligible to us — and in any sense of the word as miracu-
lous, as the immediate creation and introduction upon earth
of every species and every individual would be !"
The reader will now be able to judge of the views op-
posed to the theory of universal order. He observes that
they are of no distinct unique character, but for the most
part follow the measure of ignorance, and are maintained
at the expense of consistency. It is not surprising that the
idea of an organic creation by special exertion or fiat
should be maintained by the advocates of these views, for
it is one of the last obscure pieces of scientific ground on
which they can show face. One after another, the pheno-
mena of nature, like so many revolted principalities, have
VIEWS OF DR. PYE SMITH.
101
fallen under the dominion of order or law ; but here is one
little province still faithful to the Boeotian government ; and
as it is nearly the last, no wonder it is so vigorously de-
fended. As, in the political world, however, men do not
trust in the endurance of a dynasty which is reduced to a
single city or nook of its dominions, so may we expect a
speedy extinction to a doctrine which has been driven from
every portion of nature but one or two limited fields.
Several eminent authors of our age have even pronounced
upon the question as already settled. " Our most deeply
investigated views of the Divine Government," says the
Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, " lead to the conviction that it is ex-
ercised in the way of order, or what we usually call law.
God reigns according to immutable principles, that is,
by law, in every part of his kingdom — the mechanical, the
intellectual, and the moral ; and it appears to be most
clearly a position arising out of that fact, that a comprehen-
sive germ which shall necessarily evolve all future develop-
ments, down to the minutest atomic movements, is a more
suitable attribution to the Deity, than the idea of a neces-
sity for irregular interferences."*
In Blackwood's Magazine, a writer, understood to be a
naturalist of distinguished ability, expresses himself in an
equally decided manner : — " To reduce to a system the
acts of creation, or the development of the several forms of
animal life, no more impeaches the authorship of creation,
than to trace the laws by which the world is upheld, and
its phenomena perpetually renewed. The presumption
naturally rises in the mind, that the same Great Being
would adopt the same mode of action in both cases . . .
* Letter to Dr. Carpenter, appendix to Phil. Mag., xvi. (1840.)
102
EXPLANATIONS.
To a mind accustomed, as is every educated mind, to re-
gard the operations of Deity as essentially differing from
the limited, sudden, evanescent impulses of a human agent,
it is distressing to be compelled to picture to itself, the
power of God as put forth in any other manner than in those
slow, mysterious, universal laws, which have so plainly an
eternity to work in ; it pains the imagination to be obliged
to assimilate those operations, for a moment, to the brief
energy of a human will, or the manipulations of a human
hand There are still, indeed, some men of narrow
prejudices, who look upon every fresh attempt to reduce
the phenomena of nature to general laws, and to limit those
occasions on which it is necessary to conceive of a direct
and separate interposition of divine power, as a fresh
encroachment on the prerogatives of the Deity, or a con-
cealed attack upon his very existence. And yet these
very same men are daily appealing to such laws of the
creation as have been already established for their great
proofs of the existence and wisdom of God ! . . . " He adds,*
" No, there is nothing atheistic, nothing irreligious, in the
attempt to conceive creation, as well as reproduction, car-
ried on by universal laws."*
There is, however, no more interesting or valuable tes-
timony to universal causation than that presented in the
System of Logic of Mr. Stuart Mill. If, in the following
extract, we were to substitute the creation of organisms
for human volitions, it would apply remarkably well to the
state of the argument presented in the present volume :
" The conviction that phenomena have invariable laws,
and follow with regularity certain antecedent phenomena,
* Review of Vestiges, Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1845.
OPINIONS OF MR. STUART MILL.
103
was only acquired gradually, and extended itself, as know-
ledge advanced, from one order of phenomena to another,
beginning with those whose laws were most accessible to
observation. This progress has not yet attained its ulti-
mate point ; there being still one class of phenomena [hu-
man volitions], the subjection of which to invariable laws
is not yet universally recognized. So long as any doubt
bung over this fundamental principle, the various methods
of induction which took that principle for granted could
only afford results which were admissible conditionally; as
showing what law the phenomenon under investigation
must follow if it followed any fixed law at all. As, how-
ever, when the rules of correct induction had been con-
formed to, the result obtained never failed to be verified by
all subsequent experience ; every such inductive operation
had the effect of extending the acknowledged dominion of
general laws, and bringing an additional portion of the ex-
perience of mankind to strengthen the evidence of the uni-
versality of the law of causation ; until now at length we are
fully warranted in considering that law, as applied to all
phenomena within the range of human observation, to stand
on an equal footing in respect to evidence ivith the axioms of
geometry itself
" I apprehend that the considerations which give, at the
present day, to the proof of the law of uniformity of suc-
cession as true of all phenomena without exception, this
character of completeness and conclusiveness, are the fol-
lowing : — First ; that we now knoiv it directly to be true of
by far the greatest number of phenomena ; that there are
none of which we know it not to be true, the utmost that can
be said being, that of some we cannot positively, from
direct evidence, affirm its truth ; while phenomenon after
104
EXPLANATIONS.
phenomenon, as they become he tier known to us, are constantly
fussing from the latter class into the former ; and in all cases
in which that transition has not yet taken place, the absence
of direct proof is accounted for by the rarity or the ob-
scurity of the phenomena, our deficient means of observing
them, or the logical difficulties arising from the complica-
tion of the circumstances in which they occur ; insomuch
that, notwithstanding as rigid a dependence upon given
conditions as exists in the case of any other phenomenon,
it was not likely that we should be better acquainted with
those conditions than we are. Besides this first class of
considerations, there is a second, which still further corro-
borates the conclusion, and from the recognition of which
the complete establishment of the universal law may rea-
sonably be dated. Although there are phenomena, the
production and changes of which elude all our attempts to
reduce them universally to any ascertained law ; yet in
every such case, the phenomenon, or the objects concerned in
it, are found in some instances to obey the known laws of
nature. The wind, for example, is the type of uncertainty
and caprice, yet we find it in some cases obeying with as
much constancy as any phenomena in nature the law of
the tendency of fluids to distribute themselves so as to
equalize the pressure on every side of each of their parti-
cles ; as in the case of the trade winds, and the monsoons.
Lightning might once have been supposed to obey no laws ;
but since it has been ascertained to be identical with elec-
tricity, we know that the very same phenomenon, in some
of its manifestations, is implicitly obedient to the action of
fixed causes. I do not believe that there is now one object
or event in all our experience of nature, within the bounds of
the solar system at least, which has not either been ascertained
PREDOMINANT THEORY EXAMINED.
105
by direct observation to follow laws of its own, or been proved
to be exactly similar to objects and events, which, in more
familiar manifestations, or on a more limited scale, follow
strict laws : our inability to trace the same laws on the
larger scale, and in the more recondite instances, being
accounted for by the number and complication of the mo-
difying causes, or by their inaccessibility to observation."*
The whole question, then, stands thus. For the theory
of universal order — that is, order as presiding in both the
origin and administration of the world — we have the testi-
mony of a vast number of facts in nature, and this one in
addition, — that whatever is reft from the domain of igno-
rance and made undoubted matter of science, forms a new
support to the same doctrine. The opposite view, once
predominant, has been shrinking for ages into lesser space,
and now maintains a footing only in a few departments of
nature which happen to be less liable than others to a clear
investigation. The chief of these, if not almost the only
one, is the origin of the organic kingdoms. So long as
this remains obscure, the supernatural will have a certain
hold upon enlightened persons. Should it ever be cleared
up in a way that leaves no doubt of a natural origin of
plants and animals, there must be a complete revolution
in the view which is generally taken of our relation to the
Father of our being.
This prepares the way for a few remarks on the present
state of opinion with regard to the origin of organic nature.
The great difficulty here is the apparent determinateness
of species. These forms of life being apparently un-
changeable, or at least always showing a tendency to
return to the character from which they may have
* System of Logic, ii., 116.
6*
106
EXPLANATIONS.
diverged, the idea arises that there can have been no pro-
gression from one to another ; each must have taken its
special form, independently of other forms, directly from
the appointment of the Creator. The Edinburgh reviewer
says, " they were created by the hand of God and adapted
to the conditions of the period." Now, it is, in the first
place, not certain that species constantly maintain a fixed
character, for we have seen that what were long considered
as determinate species have been transmuted into others.
Passing, however, from this fact, as it is not generally
received among men of science, there remain some great
difficulties in connexion with the idea of special creation.
First, we should have to suppose, as pointed out in my
former volume, a most startling diversity of plan in the
divine workings, a great general plan or system of law in the
leading events of world-making, and a plan of minute nice
operation, and special attention in some of the mere details
of the process. The discrepancy between the two con-
ceptions is surely overpowering, when we allow ourselves
to see the whole matter in a steady and rational light.
There is, also, the striking fact of an ascertained historical
progress of plants and animals in the order of their organi-
zation ; marine and cellular plants and invertebrated
animals first, afterwards higher examples of both. In an
arbitrary system, we had surely no reason to expect mam-
mals after reptiles ; yet in this order they came. The
Edinburgh reviewer speaks of the animals as coming in
adaptation to conditions ; but this is only true in a limited
sense. The groves which formed the coal beds might
have been a fitting habitation for reptiles, birds, and mam-
mals, as such groves are at the present day ; yet we see
none of the last of these classes, and hardly any trace of
PREDOMINANT THEORY EXAMINED.
107
the two first in that period of the earth. Where the
iguanodon lived, the elephant might have lived ; but there
was no elephant at that time. The sea of the Lower
Silurian era was capable of supporting fish ; but no fish
existed. It hence forcibly appears that theatres of life
must have lain unserviceable, or in the possession of a
tenantry inferior to what might have enjoyed them, for many
ages ; there surely would have been no such waste allowed,
in a system where Omnipotence was working upon the
plan of minute attention to specialties. The fact seems to
denote that the actual procedure of the peopling of the
earth was one of a natural kind requiring a long space of
time for its evolution. In this supposition, the long exist-
ence of land without land animals, and more particularly,
without the noblest classes and orders, is only analogous
to the fact, not nearly enough present to the minds of a
civilized people, that to this day the bulk of the earth is a
waste as far as man is concerned.
Another startling objection is in the infinite local varia-
tion of organic forms. Did the vegetable and animal king-
doms consist of a definite number of species adapted to
peculiarities of soil and climate, and universally distributed,
the fact would be in harmony with the idea of special
exertion. But the truth is, that various regions exhibit
variations altogether without apparent end or purpose.
Professor Henslow enumerates forty-five distinct floras, or
sets of plants upon the surface of the earth, notwithstanding
that many of these would be equally suitable elsewhere.
The animals of different continents are equally various, fe w
species being the same in any two, though the general
character may conform. The inference at present drawn
from this fact is, that there must have been, to use the
108
EXPLANATIONS.
language of the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, " separate and
original creations, perhaps at different and respectively-
distant epochs." It seems hardly conceivable that rational
men should give an adherence to such a doctrine, when
we think of wnat it involves. In the single fact that it
necessitates a special fiat of the inconceivable Author of
this sand-cloud of worlds to produce the flora of St. Helena,
we read its more than sufficient condemnation. It surely
harmonizes far better with our general ideas of nature, to
suppose that, just as all else in this far-spread scene was
formed by the laws impressed on it at first by its Author,
so also was this. An exception presented to us in such a
light, appears admissible only when we succeed in forbid-
ding our minds to follow out those reasoning processes, to
which, by another law of the Almighty, they tend, and for
which they are adapted.
I feel that I have dwelt long enough on this part of the
question, and yet there are a few geological facts which
here call for special comment, and I am loath to overlook
them. As is well known, most of the large carnivores
and pachyderms of the late tertiary formations very closely
resemble existing species ; but they are, nevertheless,
determined to be distinct species by Professor Owen and
other eminent authorities, in consideration of certain
peculiarities. The peculiarities, are, in general, trifling,
such as differences in the tubercles or groovings of the
surface of teeth, or greater or less length of body or extremi-
ties; but no matter of what the differences consist. Enough
for the present that they are held by Mr. Owen and his
friends to be of that character which are never passed in
generation, but necessarily imply a new creation, a separate
effort of divine power. Now it so happens that all the
PROFESSOR PICTET's OPINIONS. 109
tertiary species, or so-called species, have not been changed
or extirpated. There is a Badger of the Miocene, which
cannot be distinguished from the badger of the present
day. Our existing Meles Taxus is, therefore, acknowledged
by Mr. Owen to be " the oldest known species of mammal
on the face of the earth." It is in like manner impossible
to iliscover any difference between the present Wild Cat
and that which lived in the bone caves with the hyaena,
rhinoceros, and the tiger of the ante-drift era, all of which
are said to be extinct species. So also the otter has sur-
vived since an early period in the pliocene, while so many
larger animals were shifted. The learned anatomist takes
occasion from these facts to speak of a survival by small
and weak species of geological changes, which have been
accompanied by the extirpation of larger and more formi-
dable animals of allied species. The inference from the
facts and doctrines of this school is, that Divine Power has
seen fit to change the species of elephants, rhinoceroses,
tigers, and bears, using special miracles to introduce new
ones, one with perhaps an additional tooth, another with
a new tubercle or cusp on the third molar, and so forth,
while he has seen no occasion for a similar interference
with the otter, wild cat, and badger, which accordingly
have been left undisturbed in their obscurity. Such may
be the belief of men of science, anxious to support a theory;
but assuredly it will never be received by any ordinary
men of fair understandings who may be able to read and
comprehend the works of Mr. Owen. It were too much
for even a child's faith. Yet the Edinburgh reviewer, a
member of this school, talks of " credulity !"
Perhaps it is but justice to Professor Pictet to notice his
partial dissent from the reigning doctrine on this point.
110
EXPLANATIONS.
This learned person, finding that the elder alluvion of the
Swiss valleys presents mammals identical with those which
now live there, though accompanied by remains of ele-
phants, and considering further that " the bats, shrews,
moles, badgers, hares, &c, of the caverns appear to be
identical with our own," concludes that the following was
the order of events as they occurred in Europe : " The
species now living, and some others, were created at the
commencement of the diluvial epoch. Partial inundations
and changes of temperature caused some of them to
perish, such as the mammoth, the species of bear having
an arched forehead, the hyasnas, the stag with gigantic
horns, the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c. ; but the greater
number of the species escaped these causes of destruction,
and still live. Beside those which I have mentioned, and
others which I have noticed in the body of my work, it is
possible, for example, that the TJrsus Priscus may he the
original of recent bears, etc. It may be said," he adds,
" that this idea is opposed to the theory of the peculiarity
of species in each formation, and to that of successive
creations . . . but I cannot, on that account, refuse to adopt
an explanation of facts which seems to me evident. The
state of theoretical palaeontology is still too uncertain to
allow of our attaching ourselves too strongly to this or
that hypothesis. It is the study of facts which is essen-
tial, and we must engage in that study unbiassed by pre-
conceived ideas or particular systems."* I would com-
mend this opinion of one of the first men of science in
Europe to those British savans who regard a greater pli-
cation of the enamel in a horse's tooth, or a ridge on a
* Traite Elementaire de Paleontologie ; L, 359, 1844. Apud
Jameson's Journal, Oct., 1845.
TIME NECESSARY.
Ill
turbinated shell, or a spot on a butterfly's wing, as the
proof of a special interference of that Deity who wheeled
the orbs into space by a tranquil expression of his will.
But M. Pictet must himself revise his opinions. He must
quickly perceive that the rule which he lays down for
there being no new creation since the diluvial epoch is
equally conclusive against new creations at any anterior
lime, There is a persistency of certain shells since the
beginning of the tertiaries ; if, then, the moles and bad-
gers be, in any degree, a proof that the present bear is a
modification of the Ursus Priscus, so also are these shells
a proof that all the present mammals are modifications of
those of the eocene. Several shells, again, of the se-
condary formation straggling into tertiaries, are not less
conclusive, in rigid reasoning, that all the tertiary species
were descended from the secondary, although the wide,
unrepresented interval at that point, allowed of a greater
transition of forms. In short the whole of the divisions
constructed by geologists upon the supposition of exten-
sive introductions of totally new vehicles of life, must
give way before the application of this rule, and it must
be seen that what they call new species are but variations
upon the old. What, then, will remain to be done, before
the theory of progressive development be adopted ? Only,
as the candid reader will readily surmise, that the culti-
vators of science should allow themselves to follow the
dictates of reason, against the behests of prejudices un-
worthy of them and of their age.
Time is the true key to difficulties regarding appear-
ances of determinateness in species. Few of us, not
even geologists, have ever realized in our minds the ex-
112
EXPLANATIONS.
tent of time which has elapsed since the beginning of life
upon this globe. Mr. Lyell, without intending to favor
the development theory, lends us powerful testimony on
this point. After showing reason to believe, that about
thirty-five thousand years have passed since the Niagara
began to cut down the rock through which it flows, during
which time the living mollusks, whether marine or ter-
restrial, are proved to have undergone no change, he thus
proceeds — " If such events can take place, while the
zoology of the earth remains almost stationary and unal-
tered, what ages may not be comprehended in those suc-
cessive tertiary periods, during which the Flora and Fauna
of the globe have been almost entirely changed ! Yet
how subordinate a place in the long calendar of geological
chronology do the successive tertiary periods themselves
occupy ! How much more enormous a duration must we
assign to many antecedent revolutions of the earth and
its inhabitants ! No analogy can be found in the natural
world to the immense scale of these divisions of past time,
unless we contemplate the celestial spaces, which have
been measured by the astronomer. Some of the nearest
of these within the limits of the solar system, as, for ex-
ample, the orbits of the planets, are reckoned by hundreds
of millions of miles, which the imagination in vain en-
deavors to grasp. Yet one of these spaces, such as the
diameter of the earth's orbit, is regarded as a mere unit, a
mere infinitesimal fraction of the distance which separates
our sun from the nearest star. By pursuing still further
the same investigations, we learn that there are luminous
clouds, scarcely distinguishable by the naked eye, but
resolvable by the telescope into clusters of stars, which
are so much more remote, that the interval between our
TIME NECESSARY.
113
sun and Sirius may be but a fraction of this larger dis-
tance. To regions of space of this higher order in point of
magnitude, we may, probably, compare such an interval of
time as that which divides the human epoch from the origin
of the coralline limestone, over which the Niagara is pre-
cipitated at the Falls. Many have been the successive
revolutions in organic life, and many the vicissitudes in
the physical geography of the globe, and often has sea
been converted into land, since that rock was formed.
The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalaya, have not only
begun to exist as lofty mountain chains, but the solid ma-
terials of which they are composed have been slowly ela-
borated beneath the sea, within the stupendous interval of
ages here alluded to."*
If time, to anything like the amount here insisted on,
have really elapsed between the commencement of life
and its attaining its highest forms, we must see that the
space comprised by the life of an individual, or even that
longer portion during which mankind have been watching
the wonders of nature, is not sufficient to allow more than
a chance of any transition of species being or having been
observed, except perhaps in the humble fields where, as
was formerly remarked, reproduction is most active and
types least defined. If, however, even in our limited com-
mand of this grand element, we can detect such transi-
tions as those amongst the cerealia, or in a common in-
fusion, may we not well suppose that much greater have
taken place in the course of the vast series of ages here
described ? Absolute proof on such a point may be im-
possible ; but nearly the same effect may be reached, if
* Travels in North America, i., 52.
114
EXPLANATIONS.
we see vestiges of the supposed facts in living phenomena,
just as we conclude upon the formation of stratified and
igneous rocks from seeing similar phenomena, generally
on a smaller scale, taking place before our eyes.
There is another mode of attaining the means of a
tolerably definite conclusion, where perfect proof is unat-
tainable. This is to show a portion or fraction of the
entire phenomenon, in conformity with the hypothesis as
to the whole. Now this can be done in the case under
consideration. There are isolated parts of the earth,
which we know to have become dry land more recently
than others. Such is the Galapagos group of islands, situ-
ated in the Pacific, between five and six hundred miles
from the American coast. They are wholly of volcanic
origin, and are considered by Mr. Darwin as having been
raised out of the sea, " within a late geological period."
Here, then, is a piece of the world undoubtedly younger,
so to speak, than most other portions are in their totality,
that is to say, it has been dry land for a much less space
of time, though one still considerable. What are the
organic productions of this curious archipelago ? In the
first place, they are " mostly aboriginal creations, found
nowhere else," though with an affinity to those of Ameri-
ca. Many of them are even peculiar to particular islands
in the group. But the remarkable fact bearing on the
present inquiry is, that, excepting a rat and a mouse on
two of the islands, supposed to have been imported by
foreign vessels, there are no mammals in the Galapagos.
The leading terrestrial animals are reptiles, and these
exist in great variety, and in some instances of extraor-
dinary size. Lizards and tortoises particularly abound.
There are also birds, eleven kinds of swimmers and
ZOOLOGY OF GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.
115
waders, and twenty-six purely terrestrial. All this har-
monizes with our ideas of the world in general at the time
of the oolites. It speaks of time being necessary for the
completion of the animal series in any scene of its deve-
lopment. The Galapagos have not had the full time re-
quired for the completion of the series, and it is incomplete
accordingly.* The entire harmony of this fact does, I
* In the Vestiges, Australia is spoken of, for the same reason, as
apparently a new country, one which has been belated in its physi-
cal and organic development. We have there an order, or what is
called an order, of mammals, namely, the marsupialia, besides a
few monotremata ; all of which may be regarded as only mamma-
lian apices of certain bird families. The placental mammalian are
wholly wanting. One might suppose that the reasoning on which
the comparative recentness of this continent was inferred would
have been readily intelligible, and that not even the most ingenious
perverseness of opposition could have hung a remark upon it. Yet
the Edinburgh reviewer presents a note (p. 58), stating that, on my
own scheme of nature, New Holland ought to have been considered
as one of the oldest countries. " He might have argued (from its
flora, its cestraceonts, its trigoniae, and its marsupials) that it was
as old as our oolites ; but this would not have served the good ends
of the scheme of development. An amusing example of inconsist-
ency." By old, I presume, is here meant duration in the condition
of dry land. I thoroughly agree with the Westminster Review,
when it says of this passage, " A more complete miscomprehension
of reasoning we have never met with." Assuredly it may well be
held up, as that Review holds it, " as a warning to believers in ex
parte criticism." The fact is, since, as Professor Phillips admits,
there has been no break in the chain of life from the beginning, our
other continents, whatever minor changes they may have under-
gone, have continued without any entire submergence since at least
the commencement of terrestrial life. They are, therefore, older
than Australia could be presumed to be, even upon the principle
hinted at by the Edinburgh reviewer. But is not that principle
utterly absurd, implying as it does that life had stood still in Aus-
116 EXPLANATIONS.
must confess, strike my mind forcibly. Had there been
mammals and no reptiles, it would have Leen quite differ-
ent. We should then have said, that one decided fact
against the development theory had been ascertained. A
minor circumstance in the zoology of these islands is
worthy of note. The swimming and wading birds are
less diverse from those of the rest of the world than the
terrestrial species, all of which, but one, are decidedly
peculiar. The same holds good regarding the shells and
the insects. Here we have the terrestrial animals spread-
ing out into numerous variations, according to the greater
variety, and the more peculiar character, of the circum-
stances determining their organization.* Mr. Darwin has
likewise observed such facts in the natural history of soli-
tary islands, as induce him to express his belief, that " the
waders, after the innumerable web-footed species, are gene-
rally the first colonists of small islands." It is his supposi-
tion, that the birds in those instances are immigrants ; but
I must advert to the fact, as strikingly in harmony with
my hypothesis of development, which was certainly
formed without any knowledge of this illustration.
Another mode of proof in the difficult circumstances
with which we are dealing, is to show that the hypothesis
will account, on a principle of law, for certain facts which
we must otherwise suppose to be wholly capricious and
tralia at one point, while it was advancing to the highest forms in
other countries ? Nay, that the agencies employed in the formation
of rocks had been stopped there, for perhaps a third of the time
of the earth's existence ? The note would not be worthy of this
analysis, but that the self-complacency of the writer is so apt to
impose upon readers who do not inquire for themselves.
* See Darwin's Journal of a Voyage Round the World, c. xvii.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 117
accidental. The hypothesis is, that, as a general fact, the
progress of being in both kinds has been from the sea to-
wards the land. Marine species of plants and animals
are supposed to be, in the main, the progenitors of terres-
trial species. Life has, as it were, crept out of the sea
upon the land. This of course leads us to consider the
distribution of vegetable and animal forms in the sea, and
the effect which these may have had in determining the
Flora and Fauna of particular detached provinces. We
would necessarily suppose that any particular Flora or
Fauna occupying a certain geographical area in the ocean,
would be apt to become the common source of the Flora or
Fauna of any masses of land adjoining to it. Now we shall
see how the facts harmonize with this view. Wherever
there is a group of islands standing much apart, its plants
and animals are never found allied to those of any remote
region of the earth, but invariably show an affinity to those
of the nearest larger masses of land. Thus, for example,
the Galapagos exhibit general characters in common with
South America ; the Cape de Verd islands, with Africa.
They are, in Mr. Darwin's happy phrase, satellites to those
continents in respect of natural history. Again, when
masses of land are only divided from each other by nar-
row seas, there is usually a community of forms. The
European and African shores of the Mediterranean pre-
sent an example. Our own islands afford another, of far
higher value. It appears that the flora of Ireland and
Great Britain is various, or rather, that we have five floras,
or distinct sets of plants, and that each of these is partaken
of by a portion of the opposite continent. There are, 1st,
a flora confined to the west of Ireland, and imparted like-
wise to the north-west of Spain ; 2d, a flora in the south-
118
EXPLANATIONS.
west promontory of England, and of Ireland, extending
across the Channel to the north-west coast of France ; 3d,
one common to the south-east of England, and north of
France ; 4th, an Alpine flora developed in the Scottish and
Welch Highlands, and intimately related to that of the
Norwegian Alps ; 5th, a flora which prevails over a large
part of England and Ireland, " mingling with the other
floras and diminishing, though slightly, as we proceed
westward this bears intimate relations with the flora of
Germany. Facts so remarkable would force the merest
fact-collector or species-denominator into generalization.
The really ingenious man who lately brought them under
notice,* could only surmise, as their explanation, that the
spaces now occupied by the intermediate seas must have
been dry land at the time when these floras were created.
In that case, either the original arrangements of the floras,
or the selection of land for submergence, must have been
apposite to the case in a degree far from usual. The ne-
cessity for a simpler cause is obvious, and it is found in
the hypothesis of a spread of terrestrial vegetation from
the sea into the lands adjacent. The community of forms
in the various regions opposed to each other, merely indi-
cates a distinct marine creation in each of the oceanic
areas respectively interposed, and which would naturally
advance into the lands nearest to it as far as circumstances
of soil and climate were found agreeable.f
* See a paper, read by Professor Edward Forbes, at Cambridge,
June, 1845, in Literary Gazette, No. 1434.
t It is, perhaps, hardly necessary here to advert to any explana-
tion which might be brought from the diffusion of seeds by ocean
currents, because the directness of the opposition of the fields of
these floras to each other across the Channel is obviously inconsist-
ent with that idea In such a case, the constituents of the various
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS.
119
There is still the difficulty of accounting for the origi-
nation of the first forms of life in the various lines after-
wards pursued to a high development. How was the inor-
ganic converted into the first rudiments of the organic ?
Whence, and of what nature was the impulse that first
kindled sensation and intelligence upon this sphere ? A
suggestion on these subjects is hazarded in my book ; but
though we were to consider the matter as an entire mys-
tery, it is, after all, only so in the same degree, and to the
same effect, as the commencement of a new being from a
little germ is a mystery to us, although we know that it is
one of the most familiar of all natural events. This last
marvel we know to be under natural law, though we can-
not otherwise explain it. If we can regard the origin and
development of life upon our planet as having been equally
under natural law, the whole point is gained ; for we are
not so much inquiring in order to say how ? as was it within
or beyond the natural ? We have seen then, as I conceive,
that all the associated truths of science go to this point.
The whole concur to say, that to believe an exception in
this particular of the history of nature, is an absurdity.
Difficulties there may be in treating the case positively ;
some facts of inferior importance may seem to point to an
opposite conclusion ; but in the balance of the two sets of
evidences, those for a universality of natural law down-
weigh the other beyond calculation.
I have now to allude to a class of objections different
floras would have been confused amongst each other by the diver-
sity of currents in the intermediate seas. Mr. Forbes plainly con-
fesses this explanation to be inadmissible in the present case ; and,
of course, it is not the right explanation in any other.
120
EXPLANATIONS.
from those made on scientific grounds, but fortunately not
less easily replied to. It has appeared to various critics,
particularly to the writer in the Edinburgh Review, that
very sacred principles are threatened by a doctrine of uni-
versal law. A natural origin of life, and a natural basis
in organization for the operations of the human mind, speak
to them of fatalism and materialism. And, strange to say,
those, who every day give views of physical cosmogony
altogether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses,
apply hard names to my book for suggesting an organic
cosmogony in the same way liable to inconsiderate odium.
I must firmly protest against this mode of meeting specu-
lations regarding nature. The object of my book, what-
ever may be said of the manner in which it is treated, is
purely scientific. The views which I give of this history
of organization, stand exactly on the same ground upon
which the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I am
merely endeavoring to read aright another chapter of the
mystic book which God has placed under the attention of
his creatures. A little liberality of judgment would ena-
ble even an opponent of my particular hypothesis, to see
that questions as to reverence and irreverence, piety and
impiety, are practically determined very much by special
'.mpressions upon particular minds. He would see, foi
example, that the idea of attaching irreverence to a doc-
trine of natural law is only likely to arise in a mind which
has been trained by habit, to regard the divine working as
more special in its nature — precisely as, finding the Edin-
burgh reviewer speaking of the whole works of the Deity
as " vulgar nature" (p. 53), I feel that the impiety which
such an idea expresses to my sense, is only impiety to me,
who cannot separate nature from God himself, but it is not
TENDENCY OF THE NEW DOCTRINE. 121
necessarily so to him, whose education has given him pe-
culiar, and as I think erroneous conceptions on this sub-
ject. The absence, however, of all liberality on these
points in my reviewers, is striking, and especially so in
those whose geological doctrines have exposed them to
similar misconstructions. If the men newly emerged from
the odium which was thrown upon Newton's theory of the
planetary motions, had rushed forward to turn that odium
upon the patrons of the dawning science of geology, they
would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my
critics, themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands of
the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble against a
new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the
best means of purchasing impunity for themselves I trust
that a little time will enable the public to penetrate this
policy, and also the real bearing of all such objections.
They must soon see that, if a literal interpretation of
scripture is an insufficient argument against the true geog-
nostic history of our earth, so also must it be against all
associated phenomena, supposing they are presented on
good evidence.
" Some persons," says one of my reviewers, " have a
vague idea, that there is something derogatory to the low-
est form of animal life to have its origin in merely inorga-
nic elements ; an idea which results, perhaps, not so much
from any subtle and elevated conceptions of life, as from
an imagination unawakened to the dignity and the marvel
of the inorganic world. What is motion but a sort of life ?
a life of activity, if not of feeling. Suppose — what, in-
deed, nowhere exists — an inert matter, and let it be sud-
denly endowed with motion, so that two particles should fly
towards each other from the utmost bounds of the uni-
7
122
EXPLANATIONS.
verse ; were not this almost as strange a property as that
which endows an irritable tissue, or an organ of secretion ?
Is not the world one — the creature of one God — dividing
itself, with constant interchange of parts, into the sentient
and the non-sentient, in order, so to speak, to become con-
scious of itself? Are we to place a great chasm between
the sentient and the non-sentient, so that it shall be deroga-
tion to a poor worm to have no higher genealogy than the
element which is the lightning of heaven, and too much
honor to the subtle chemistry of the earth, to be the father
of a crawling subject, of some bag, or sack, or impercep-
tible globule of animal life. No; we have no recoil
against this generation of an animalcule by the wonder-
ful chemistry of God ; our objection to this doctrine is,
that it is not proved."*
As one example of the weakness of the opposition pre-
sented by the Edinburgh reviewer on this ground, I may
quote a passage in which he has also aimed at convicting
me of being enamored of resemblances, and allowing my
senses to be cheated by empty sounds. " Every one,"
says he, " has heard of the quickness of thought, and who
has not heard of the velocity of the galvanic fluid ? There-
fore, the speed of thought may be reduced to numbers, and
a man may think at the rate of 192,000 miles a second !
We well know that the author may shelter himself under
the juggle of his own words, and tell us that he speaks
only of the transmission of our will through the organs of
the body. Let him, then, write in more becoming lan-
guage." Now a man is surely entitled to be judged by his
own words, or all judgment might as well cease. After
Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1845.
OPPOSITION OF THE SCIENTIFIC CLASS. 123
showing that a galvanic battery produces at least some of
the effects of the brain, and endeavoring to reconcile ordi-
nary thinkers to the idea of their partial identity by insist-
ing on the almost metaphysical character of the imponder-
able agents, I said, in a foot-note, " If mental action is
electric, the proverbial quickness of thought, that is, the
quickness of the transmission of sensation and will — may be
presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement,"
&c. I leave the reader to judge if language more direct
and less illusive than this could have been employed.
With regard to the idea conveyed, the critic has perhaps
forgot, or never known, that the merit of suggesting the
identity of the electricity-driven clockwork of Deluc with
that operation of the brain which produces the pulsations
of the heart, is claimed by his " model of philosophic cau-
tion," Sir John Herschel.* The expression used by that
philosopher on the occasion, " If the brain be an electric
pile," &c, ought, doubtless, to condemn him in the eyes
of our critic as a man enamored of resemblances, and a
user of unbecoming phraseology — if our critic be a man
of impartiality. But he must (if critics be capable of
such weakness) revise his opinion on the subject of resem-
blances. It might surprise even his self-confident mind to
find in what decisive terms their utility as one of the means
of advancing in scientific observation is insisted on by this
very " model of philosophic caution." He will find the
passage at page 94 of the celebrated Discourse.
After discussing the whole arguments on both sides in
so ample a manner, it may be hardly necessary to advert to
the objection arising from the mere fact, that nearly all the
Discourse on Natural Philosophy, p. 343.
124
EXPLANATIONS.
scientific men are opposed to the theory of the Vestiges.
As this objection, however, is one likely to be of some avail
with many minds, it ought not to be entirely passed over.
If I did not think there were reasons independent of judg-
ment for the scientific class coming so generally to this
conclusion, I might feel the more embarrassed in present-
ing myself in direct opposition to so many men possessing
talents and information. As the case really stands, the
ability of this class to give at the present time, a true re-
sponse upon such a subject, appears extremely challenge-
able. It is no discredit to them, that they are, almost with-
out exception, engaged, each in his own little department
of science, and able to give little or no attention to other
parts of that vast field. From year to year, and from age
to age, we see them at work, adding no doubt much to the
known, and advancing many important interests, but, at
the same time, doing little for the establishment of com-
prehensive views of nature. Experiments in however nar-
row a walk, facts of whatever minuteness, make reputa-
tions in scientific societies ; all beyond is regarded with
suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, that philoso-
phy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise its vo-
taries above the common ideas of their time. There can,
therefore, be nothing more conclusive against our hypothe-
sis in the disfavor of the scientific class, than in that of
any other section of uneducated men. There is even less ;
for the position of scientific men with regard to the rest of
the public is such, that they are rather eager to repudiate,
than to embrace general views, seeing how unpopular
these usually are. The reader may here be reminded,
that there is such a thing in human nature as coming to
venerate the prejudices which we are compelled to treat
ALLEGED USES OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 125
tenderly, because it is felt to be better to be consistent at
the sacrifice of even judgment and conscience than to have
a war always going on between the cherished and the
avowed. Accordingly, in the case of a particular doctrine,
which, however unjustly, is regarded as having an ob-
noxious tendency, it is not surprising that scientific men
view it with not less hostility than the common herd. For
the very purpose of maintaining their own respect in the
concessions they have to make, they naturally wish to find
all possible objections to any such theory as that of pro-
gressive development, exaggerating every difficulty in its
way, rejecting, wherever they can, the evidence in its
favor, and extenuating what they cannot reject ; in short,
taking all the well recognized means which have been so
often employed in keeping back advancing truths. If this
looks like special pleading, I can only call upon the reader
to bring to his remembrance the impressions which have
been usually made upon him by the transactions of learned
societies and the pursuits of individual men of science.
Did he not always feel that, while there were laudable in-
dustry and zeal, there was also an intellectual timidity
rendering all the results philosophically barren ? Perhaps
a more lively illustration of their deficiency in the life and
soul of Nature-seeking, could not be presented than in the
view which Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science,
in a treatise reputed as one of the most philosophical ever
produced in our country. These uses, according to the
learned knight, are strictly material — it might even be
said, sordid — namely, " to show us how to avoid attempting
impossibilities — to secure us from important mistakes, in
attempting what is, in itself, possible, by means either in-
adequate, or actually opposed to the end in view — to enable
126
EXPLANATIONS.
us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest, most
economical, and most effectual manner — to induce us to
attempt, and enable us to accomplish objects, which, but for
such knowledge, we should never have thought of under-
taking."* Such results, it will be felt, may occasionally be
of importance in saving a country gentleman from a hope-
less mining speculation, or adding to the powers and profits
of an iron-foundry or a cotton-mill ; but nothing more.
When the awakened and craving mind asks what science
can do for us in explaining the great ends of the Author
of nature, and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life,
and to eternity, the man of science turns to his collection
of shells or butterflies, to his electrical machine, or his re-
tort, and is mute as a child who, sporting on the beach, is
asked what lands lie beyond the great ocean which stretches
before him. The natural sense of men who do not happen
to have taken a taste for the coleoptera or for the laws of
fluids, revolts at the sterility of such pursuits, and, though
fearful of some error on its own part, can hardly help con-
demning the whole to ridicule. Can we wonder that such,
to so great an extent, is their fate in public opinion, when
we read the appeal presented in their behalf by the very
prince of modern philosophers 1 Or can we say that
where such views of " the uses of divine philosophy " are
entertained, there could be any right preparation of mind
to receive with candor, or treat with justice, a plan of na-
ture like that presented in the Vestiges of Creation 1 No,
it must be before another tribunal, that this new philosophy
is to be truly and righteously judged.
Tt is important that these sentences be not misunderstood.
There is both a necessity for the ascertainment of detached
* Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 44.
UTILITY OF HYPOTHESES.
12T
facts, that we may attain to the elimination of principles,
and a danger in premature generalization, as tending to
mislead men from the true road to that result. But, on
the other hand, scientific men are seen spending their time
in wrong pursuits, merely for want of the tracings which
are often supplied for their- direction by happy hypotheses.
It is to the chilling repression of all saliency in investiga-
tion, which characterizes the scientific men of our country
and age, that I object, not to a due caution in selecting
proper paths in which to venture. The function of hypo-
thesis in suggesting observations and experiments is ad-
mitted by one of the most vigorous thinkers of our time.
" Without such assumptions, science could never have at-
tained its present stale : they are necessary steps in the
progress to something more certain. . . . The process
of tracing regularity in any complicated and at first sight
confused set of appearances, is necessarily tentative : we
beo-in by making any supposition, even a false one, to see
what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing
how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what
corrections to make in our assumption. . . ' Some fact,'
says M. Comte, ' is as yet little understood, or some law is
unknown : we frame on the subject an hypothesis as ac-
cordant as possible with the whole of the data already
possessed ; and the science, being thus enabled to move
forward freely, always ends by leading to new conse-
quences capable of observation, which either confirm or
refute, unequivocally, the first supposition.' ... Let any
one watch the manner in which he himself unravels any
complicated mass of evidence; let him observe, how for
instance, he elicits the true history of any occurrence from
the involved statements of one or many witnesses: he will
128
EXPLANATIONS.
find that he does not take all the items of evidence into his
mind at once, and attempt to weave them together : the
human faculties are not equal to such an undertaking ; he
extemporizes, from a few of the particulars, a first rude
theory of the mode in which the facts took place, and then
looks at the other statements one by one, to try whether
they can be reconciled with that provisional theory, or what
additions or corrections it requires to make it square with
them. In this way .... we arrive, by means of hypo-
theses, at conclusions not hypothetical."* It was with the
design of thus giving a direction to inquiry, and leading to
views of nature previously little thought of, but unspeak-
ably grander than those commonly entertained, that, too
eager for truth to regard my own imperfections, I ventured
upon my late speculation. When an ordinary reader
judges of it, let him remember that the question lies, not
between two philosophical theories, but between one phi-
losophical theory and a view of nature which does not even
profess to look to nature for a basis. As a system, more-
over, which finds none of the previous labors of science
shaped or directed in favor of its elucidation, but all in the
contrary way, it obviously calls for every reasonable al-
lowance being made for its defects. It may prove a true
system, though one half of the illustrations presented by its
first explicator should be wrong.
For any mind competent to judge of the argument, there
can be little need to insist upon the superiority of the con-
clusions to which it leads, over the results which arise
from more limited views of ordinary science. Existing
philosophy, halting between the notions of the enlightened
* Mill's System of Logic.
USES OF THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL LAW. 129
and the unenlightened man, leaves us only puzzled. We
know not how to regard the phenomena of the world, and
our own relation to them. Many sink into a kind of fatalism
which paralyzes the faculties ; others ascend into fantas-
tic dreams which exercise a not less baleful influence.
Some of the disastrous consequences are sufficiently con-
spicuous ; but many more blaze and expend themselves in
privacy, known only in the circles where they have been
so fatally felt. The entire conduct of a large portion of
society, and more or less that of nearly all the rest, is regu-
lated, or rather cast loose from regulation, by the want of
definite ideas regarding that fixed plan of the divine work-
ing, on the study and observance of which it is evident
that our secular happiness nearly altogether depends.
Even acute men of the world are daily seen acting to their
own manifest injury, in consequence of their utter igno-
rance of any system of law pressing around them. With
the great bulk of society, life is merely a following of a
few inferior instincts, with a perfect blindness to conse-
quences. By individuals and by communities alike, phy-
sical and moral evils are patiently endured, which a true
knowledge of the system of Providence would cause to be
instantly redressed. Daily health and comfort, life itself,
are sacrificed through the want of this knowledge. It is
not in the heyday of cheerful, active, and prosperous ex-
istence, or when we look only to the things which consti-
tute the greatness of nations, that we become sensible of
this truth. We must seek for convictions on the subject,
beside the death-beds of amiable children, destroyed
through ignorance of the rules of health, and hung over by
parents who feel that life is nothing to them when these
dear beings are no more ; in the despairing comfortless-
>7*
130
EXPLANATIONS.
ness of the selfish, who have acted through long years on
the supposition that the social affections could be starved
hurtlessly ; in the pestilences ravaging the haunts of
poverty, and revenging, in a spreading contagion, the neg-
lect by the rich of the haplessness of their penury and
disease stricken neighbors ; in the canker of discontent
and crime, which eats into the vitals of a nation in conse-
quence of an unlimited indulgence of acquisitiveness by
those possessing the most ready natural resources and
standing in the most fortunate positions ; in the national
degradation and misery which follow wars entered upon
in the wantonness of pride, greed, and vanity. Doubtless
were the idea vitally present in the minds of all men, that
from laws of unswerving regularity every act, thought,
and emotion of theirs helps to determine their own future
both by its direct effects on their fate, and its reflection
from the future of their fellow-creatures, and this without
any possibility of reprieve or extenuation, we should see
society presenting a different aspect from what it does, the
sum of human misery vastly diminished, and that of the
general happiness as much increased.
I am not to attempt a particular defence of the new view
of nature from various odiums thrown upon it, for this
can only be rightly done when time has abated prejudice,
and shown more clearly the relation of this philosophy to
all other views cherished by civilized nations. But I may
meanwhile remark its harmony with the great practical
principle of Christianity, in establishing the universal
brotherhood and social communion of man. And not only
this, but it extends the principle of humanity to the meaner
creatures also. Life is everywhere one. The inferior
animals are only less advanced types of that form of being
MORAL RESULTS. 131
perfected in ourselves. Constituted as its head — with a
peculiar psychical character and destiny by virtue of that
position — we are yet essentially connected with the humbler
vehicles of vitality and intelligence, and placed in moral
relations towards them. We are bound to respect the
rights of animals as of our human associates. We are
bound to respect even their feelings. And from obeying
these moral laws, we shall reap as certain a harvest of
benefit to ourselves, as by obeying any code of law that
ever was penned. The rule of force and of cruelty has
hitherto prevailed in this department of the world's eco-
nomy as between man and man ; but the day of true
knowledge will bring a better rule here also, and the many
good qualities of these patient and unresisting ministers of
our convenience will yet be acknowledged and dwelt on
by all with admiration and love.
Is our own position affected injuriously by this view, or
can our relation to the universe and its Author be pre-
sumed to be so ? Assuredly not. Our character is now
seen to be a definite part of a system which is definite.
The Deity himself becomes a defined, instead of a capri-
cious being. Power to make and to uphold remains his
as before, but is invested with a character of tranquillity
altogether new — the highest attribute we can conceive in
connexion with power. Viewing him as the author of this
vast scheme by the mere force of his will, and yet as the
indispensably present sustainer of all ; seeing that the
whole is constructed upon a plan of benevolence and jus-
tice ; we expand to loftier, more generous and holy emo-
tions, as we feel that we are essential parts of a system so
great and good. The place we hold in comparison is
humble beyond all statement of a degree ; yet it is a cer-
132
EXPLANATIONS.
tain and intelligible place. We know where we stand,
and have some sense also of our chronological place.
The years of our existence occupy a space in that mighty
series, during some earlier portion of which this globe,
since the theatre of glories and of sorrows numberless, was
moulded into form. Arithmetic could state, if we knew
it, the connexion between the birth of a babe which saw
the light an hour ago, and the time when the elements of
our astral system began to resolve themselves into those
countless orbs, one of which is Man's, the stage of his long
descended history, and the bounds within which all his
secular phenomena must ever be confined. The unit of
each individuality, great or humble in social regard, takes
a fixed place in that march of life which rose unreckoned
ages ago, and now goes on to a " weird," which no wizard
has pretended to know. We feel that, amidst all the dis-
grace of trouble and trespass, we are still the first form of
active being after the Greatest, and therefore may well be
assured that, immeasurably as is our distance from God,
we are still immediately regarded and cared for by him.
Surely there is here much to soothe and to encourage. It
may be that the individual often suffers innocently to ap-
pearance in our present sphere ; but then he is part of a
system of assured benevolence and justice : having faith
in this he is safe. It may be, as some one has suggested,
that there is not only a term of life to the individual, but
to the species, and that when the proper time comes, the
prolific energy being exhausted, man is transferred to the
list of extinct forms. Strange thought, that the beauteous
phenomena of personal existence — the thrill of the lover,
the mother's smile on cherub infancy, the brightness of lov-
ing firesides, the aspirations of generous poets and philo-
MORAL RESULTS.
133
sophers, the thought cast up and beyond the earthly, that
petard which breaks down every door — the tear of peni-
tence, the meekness of the suffering humble, the ardor of
the strong in good causes, all that the great and beneficent
of all ages have felt, all that each of us now sees, and
muses on, in his home, his people, his age, — that all these
should be thus resolved ; passing away whole " equinox-
es " into the past, as far as we particular men are con-
cerned, still passing further back as respects the larger
personalities called nations, and still further in inconceiva-
ble multiplication with regard to the species — gone, lost,
hushed in the stillness of a mightier death than has hith-
erto been thought of! But yet the faith may not be shak-
en, that that which has been endowed with the power of
godlike thought, and allowed to come into communion with
its Eternal Author, cannot be truly lost. The vital flame
which proceeded from him at first returns to him in our
perfected form at last, bearing with it all good and lovely
things, and making of all the far-extending Past but one
intense Present, glorious and everlasting.
134
COMMUNICATIONS BY
COMMUNICATIONS BY H. WEEKES, ESQ.
Referred to at page 85.
Dear Sir, — Since the details of my first experiments on the pro-
duction of acari in close atmospheres were given to the world,
through the medium of the " Proceedings of the London Electrical
Society," session of 1842, &c, and, about the same time, circulated
among my scientific friends, in a reprint from the above-named
work, as stated by you in a foot-note to page 187, first edition of the
Vestiges, the subject has continued to occupy my attention, while
the nature of my researches has been frequently modified by varia-
tions in regard to the form of the experiments, and their correlative
arrangements.
Incident to the period included by the last three years, many
experiments on the subject have been completed ; others are even
yet in progress ; and, however rigid were the conditions in any case
adopted, thus much is certain, that the acari have invariably ap-
peared in the several solutions under electrical influence, while
their absence has been as invariably remarked, in spite of the
nicest scrutiny, in all negative tests provided to accompany the
respective primary experiments.
The following may be taken as an example of the stringent cir-
cumstances under which my latter experiments have been con-
ducted ; and although, in my own estimation, the evidence it yields
is not one whit more conclusive than the results formerly made
known, it is clearly free from certain objections urged against the
first experiments, and is selected under an impression that, if these
conditions fail to show that the electric current is the agent by
which the laws of organization have been promoted, then we have
W. H. WEEKES, ESQ.
135
— maugre the Baconian philosophy— already trusted too much to
experimental facts, with a view to the establishment of truth.
It is by no means easy, even if practicable, independent of
sketches, to convey a precise idea of the apparatus employed in the
experiment I am about to communicate. I will, nevertheless,
attempt to describe it with as much brevity and plainness as pos-
sible. In the first place, I must mention that the arrangements
were originally of a three-fold character : — 1st. A close vessel con-
taining a saline solution, and above it an artificial atmosphere ; 2d,
An open vessel containing the same solution, both acted upon by
the same current passing through them from a voltaic battery ;
3d, Two glass jars standing on the same table, as negative tests, and
in every way corresponding with the respective primary vessels,
excepting that they had no wire appendages, and were unelectrified.
The close vessel consists of a wide-mouthed glass jar, capable of
containing a pint and a half of liquid, and is manufactured from
the purest and most transparent material. From the top, or shoulder
of this jar, ascends to the height of an inch from the surrounding
surface, a remarkably stout and strong neck, which presents an
opening of two inches diameter. Into this opening a thick metallic
plug or stopper, cast from " fusible alloy," is fitted perfectly air-
tight, by a process of long and careful grinding. Perpendicularly
through the metallic stopper, and at the distance of an inch from
each other, so as to occupy the extremes of an equilateral triangle,
are drilled three holes, each rather more than two-tenths of an inch
diameter, and into each of these is soldered, air-tight, a correspond;
ing glass tube. The two principal of this series of tubes serve the
purpose of insulating a pair of stout copper wires, which pass longi-
tudinally through them, and are united at each end by a joint fusion
of the glass and metal. Two other wires of platina proceed from
the lower ends of the copper wires to nearly the bottom of the jar,
where they terminate in closely-wound spirals, rather more than an
inch apart, while the ends of the copper wires, projecting from the
upper ends of their respective tubes, have conical cavities drilled
out for the reception of a globule of mercury, by means of which
communication with the voltaic battery is established. The third
tube, passing first to the depth of an inch below the metallic plug,
is bent above the latter into a syphon form, and contains in its cur-
136
COMMUNICATIONS OF
vature a globule of mercury weighing about three drachms, which
acts as a valve for the occasional escape of gaseous matter generated
within the close vessel, and is, at the same time, a guarantee against
the ingress of any species of insect life. The mercury employed to
form this valve was cautiously distilled from the red sulphuret of
that metal.
By the side of the close vessel above described was placed, in the
first instance, a glass tumbler, capable of holding half a pint of
liquid. Through two pieces of mahogany, cemented to opposite
inner surfaces of this second vessel, were made to pass two stout
copper wires, terminating, like those adapted to the close jar, in
platina spirals a little more than an inch apart near the bottom of
the tumbler. The upper ends of these wires were similarly pro-
vided with longitudinal cavities also, drilled out for the reception
of small globules of mercury, to complete contact and facilitate inter-
communication.
On the 2d of May, 1842, the apparatus, of which a description
has been attempted, was set to work after the following manner : —
A solution of ferrocyanate of potass, prepared by carefully boiling
two ounces of the salt in sixteen ounces of distilled water, being in
readiness for the occasion, ten ounces of the liquid were transferred
to the glass jar, and immediately after an elastic metal pipe, in
communication with an iron bottle in a state of white heat, and from
which a stream of pure oxygen rapidly proceeded, was dipped into
the solution in the jar. In this way, the gas, without passing
through water, or being brought in contact with any external agent,
continued to be supplied to the jar, until the entire atmosphere
above the solution consisted of oxygen alone, when the metallic
plug was deposited instantly in the neck of the jar, so as to cut off
all communication with the external air. The open vessel or tum-
bler being now placed by the side of the close apparatus, and four
ounces of the solution before mentioned having been poured into it,
the necessary communication between the two vessels was effected
by means of suitable wires, and contact at the same time similarly
established with the respective poles of a constant battery of ten
pairs. By means of this arrangement, the current entered the open
vessel first, and then proceeded, through the solution in the close
apparatus, in its way to the negative side.
W. H. "VVEEKES, ESQ.
137
I must here remark that the electric current, immediately on its
first application, was observed to decompose the solution with such
energy, that I deemed it advisable to suspend the operation until
the activity of the battery should be somewhat modified, and it was
not until the evening of the 6th of May that I could date the com-
mencement of my experiment.
A circumstantial record of all important changes connected with
this experiment has been preserved, up to the present day, em-
bracing a period of three years and three months, but I cannot con-
clude that any extracts from my memoranda would enhance the
interest of the present notice. I shall therefore prefer a brief sum-
mary of the results ; first premising that two excellent constant
batteries have been successively worn out in the undertaking, and
that the requisite changes were made without interruption to the
electric current, which is now transmitted by a water-battery of
twenty pairs, working with the characteristic uniformity of this ex-
cellent species of voltaic contrivance. I would further remark that,
from the commencement of the experiment, the battery and the re-
spective vessels containing the solutions have been strictly excluded
from the light, by means of a screen constructed for the occasion,
and the entire proceeding has been confined to a retired room kept
constantly locked, no one having access unless accompanied by my-
self. My general habit has been to visit the arrangement once in
two days, for the purpose of noting the progress, supplying the bat-
tery with crystals of sulphate of copper, making good the loss of
fluids caused by the evaporation, &c.
1. October 19th, 1842 — one hundred and sixty -six days from the
commencement of the experiment — the first acari seen in connec-
tion therewith, six in number and nearly full-grown, were dis-
covered on the outside of the open glass vessel. On removing two
pieces of card which had been laid over the mouth of this vessel,
several fine specimens were found inhabiting the under surfaces,
and others completely developed and in active motion here and
there within the glass.
October 20th.— Making my visit at an hour when a more favora-
ble light entered the room, swarms of acari were found on the cards,
about the glass tumbler, both within and without, and also on the
platform of the apparatus. At this identical hour Dr. J. Black
138
COMMUNICATIONS OF
favored me with a call, inspected the arrangements, and received
six living specimens of the acarus produced from solution in the.
open vessel. No trace of insect life could at this time be discovered
in the close vessel with an oxygen atmosphere. The solution in
the open vessel had undergone very slight change of color, but ex-
hibited a multitude of minute and beautifully colored crystals with
a prevailing tinge of crimson. The solution beneath the oxygen
atmosphere, about ten days after the voltaic current began to tra-
verse it, had assumed a reddish-brown appearance, which gradually
darkened in color until scarcely any light could be transmitted
through it, or the ascent of gas from either of the electrodes per-
ceived.
2. Myriads of acari continued to be developed from the solution
in the open vessel until the 20th August, 1843, when it was found
expedient to determine this division of the experiment, and confine
the operation of the electric current solely to the close arrangement,
in which no appearance of insect life had yet been detected. Be-
fore removing the open vessel I had, however, the satisfaction to
supply therefrom abundance of living specimens to my scientific
friends who had kindly interested themselves on the subject, in
various parts of England, Scotland, France, and America.
3. In the beginning of the month of June, 1844, rather more
than two years from the commencement of these operations, the
solution in the close vessel began to manifest signs of a most remark-
able change, the results of constant, slow, and almost invisible de-
composition. The apparatus was carefully tested, and found, as at
first, perfectly air-tight, and the confined liquid was evidently
returning to a paler red color, as well as a partially translucent
condition. These latter appearances rapidly increased, and about
the beginning of September in the same year, the solution had ac-
quired a light amber color and perfect transparency, with abundant
flakes and scroll-like forms of irregular oxide of iron of a deep
orange color, nearly covering the bottom of the jar. Most of these
had, doubtless, been detached in succession from the negative plati-
na spiral, and were conspicuous through the altered solution. It
was while engaged in examining this singular accumulation of
oxide, by means of an excellent lens, that I saw for the first time
an unequivocal proof of the existence of insect life within the
W. H. WEEKES, ESQ.
139
close vessel. Several spinous processes of the acari and other
remains were detected floating on the surface of the solution, and
others attached to the inside of the glass a few lines above the
liquid, while, under circumstances somewhat more obscure, several
entire dead insects were perceived amidst the flakes resting on the
bottom of the jar. An omission — of secondary importance, it is
true — was now for the first time apparent in the apparatus : this
was the want of a fitting shelf or resting-place for the insects ; a
circumstance that my kind friend, Andrew Crosse, Esq., when he
favored me with a visit a few weeks after, remarked almost imme-
diately, and said, before he knew that acari had already appeared,
" that they would fall in and be drowned almost as fast as they
were produced." Mr. Crosse was right in his conjecture, for
although I have latterly watched the proceeding with diurnal care,
I have never identified the presence of more than two living in-
sects at the same time within the close apparatus, and these have
as speedily as invariably shared the fate of their predecessors. Not-
withstanding the omission alluded to, I enjoy an increase of satis-
faction in the knowledge that I have kept from my arrangements
any substance which by its introduction might have been suspected
of vitiating the results, while the main object of the undertaking
has in no wise suffered in its accomplishment. I have only to add
my belief, founded on considerable experience and much observa-
tion, that insect life was first developed in this division of my ex-
periment, some time in the month of July, 1844, about two years
and two months from the commencement.
I am, dear sir, yours faithfully,
W. H. Weekes.
Sandwich, 2d Sept., 1845.
To tho Author of " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation."
ELECTRO-VEGETATION.
On the 3d of October, 1842, 1 commenced an electro-chemical
experiment, which has constantly, since that period, been in pro-
gress, and will probably continue for some time longer. It is not
*
140
COMMUNICATIONS OF
necessary to the present notice that I should detail the objects of
this undertaking, as the indications of a successful result induce me
to suppose that particulars may eventually be worth communicating
to the scientific public. I shall therefore merely state that a cylin-
drical glass vessel, capable of containing about ten fluid ounces,
with a bottom of porous baked earth, and open at the top, is sus-
pended in a convenient frame, is about three-fourths filled with a
solution of refined sugar in distilled water, receiving occasional
supplies, and that the poles of a water-battery of twenty-five pairs
terminate within an inch of each other in the solution before men-
tioned, about an inch also from the bottom of the cylindrical vessel.
Through the porous bottom alluded to, the saccharine liquid gradu-
ally percolated, during several months — that is, until its minute
viaducts became completely obstructed. The solution thus filtered
fell into a convenient glazed earthen jar placed under the appa-
ratus, and was occasionally returned to the inside of the glass
cylinder.
About the beginning of September, 1843, a small patch of fungus,
of a peculiar character, was observed to have commenced forming
on the outside of the glass, near its lower rim, but yet not in con-
tact with the line of junction between the glass and its earthen
bottom. At this period the solution had ceased to drop through
the earthen diaphragm, and the incipient fungus occupied a spot
on the outside of the glass directly opposite the negative electrode
within. This substance having, when first seen, a gelatinous appear-
ance, of a dark-brown color, by slow degrees extended itself round
the lower rim of the glass, forming an irregular band or zone, half
an inch in breadth, and throwing out numerous protuberances as
it approached the positive side of the arrangement. On the 29th
of November, in the same year, the following note relative to this
singular production occurs among my memoranda ; and as I cannot
otherwise better describe its mature appearance, I shall subjoin the
extract : —
" The substance of this fungus varies in color from a light choco-
late to that of a dark sanguineous red, and though formerly of a
soft texture, it now offers considerable resistance. When viewed
with an excellent pocket-lens — the only sort of microscope that
can be brought to bear upon it — a most singularly-beautiful species
W. H. WEEKES, ESQ.
141
of vegetation is seen to occupy its entire surface, presenting various
shades of crimson, green, olive, and green inclining to yellow. In
its general appearance it at once suggests the idea of a magnificent
forest, consisting of trees and flowering shrubs in miniature. In
particular spots, fine, downy, needle-like spires occur in vast mul-
titudes, and these otherwise naked processes rising from the body
of the fungus, are surmounted by what appear to be seed-vessels in
some instances, and irregular feathery tufts in others."*
This experiment was not designed with any reference to my re-
searches on the development of the electrical acari, but swarms of
these creatures appeared incidental to its progress, and, at the time
the above note was made, many of them were seen inhabiting the
miniature forest on the fungus, where they seemed to thrive
amazingly, and to attain a larger size than any I have hitherto
seen.
About the autumn of the year 1844, the fungus had extended to
the positive side of the arrangement, thus forming a continuous cir-
cular band ; and it is not the least remarkable feature of its brief
history, that immediately on the completion of this event, the luxu-
riance and beauty of its vegetation were observed rapidly to decline.
A portion of the fungous mass still adheres to the glass, but it is
no longer an object of special interest.
To what extent this singular and beautiful production is indebted
to the action of an electric current constantly, and for a long time,
traversing the saccharine liquid, in connection with which it ap-
peared, I am not prepared, by the assistance of facts, at present to
say, but the following suggestions occur to my mind as strong
analogical reasons in support of its electrical origin, nature, and
progress.
1st. I am tolerably conversant with most of the known fungi of
this country, but am not acquainted with any species with which
the one in question can be identified, or even be said to resemble.
2d. The glazed earthen jar placed under the porous bottom of
the cylinder to catch the filtered liquid, had, at the time the fungus
* Shortly after the above note was entered in my memoranda, a small portion
of the fungus, with its incumbent vegetation, was submitted to a powerful micro •
scope, and a sketch made in accordance, which, for obvious reasons, cannot be
here introduced.
142 COMMUNICATIONS OF W. H. WEEKES, ESQ.
originated, a considerable quantity of dark saccharine matter re-
sembling concrete molasses therein ; this was suffered to remain as
a negative test to the electrical character of the fungus, presuming
the latter to have had its beginning in a portion of sugary deposit
derived from the solution through the porous diaphragm ; yet,
though the surface of the residuum in the earthen jar presented the
usual indications of mouldiness, no appearance of a fungoid kind,
or that of minute vegetation, could at any time be detected within
the unelectrified jar.
3d. The commencement of the fungus at a point precisely cor-
responding with the negative pole of the arrangement, its luxu-
riance and maturity in the intermediate space on the glass cylinder,
and its decay on finally reaching the positive side, are in them-
selves facts pleading strongly in favor of electrical influence over
the organization of this remarkable species of vegetation.
W. H. Weekeb.
Sandwich, 5th Sept., 1845.
To the Author of " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation."
THE END.
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glories of Rome. It is altogether a delightful book."— Albany Argus. >
"This elegantly-printed volnme cannot fail to be read by thousands, and 1
read with delight. Our author has vividly and succinctly portrayed whatever !
! people usually go to Rome to see, or read travels thither to learn. His letters !
, may be read with pleasure by the thorough scholar, as well as by the ea°er !
i devourer of all that is new."— JV. Y. Tribune. ' |
; "Whoever wishes to obtain a close and familiar view of Rome, will eet it
. nowhere better than in this work. Mr. Gillespie has looked upon the city
> with the eye and heart of a scholar. He enjoys Rome, and this very enjoy- I
meat of his communicates itself to his writings, and he involuntarily puts his I
readers in a state of feeling to enjoy it with aim." -Democratic Review. !
"We know so well the mental qualities by which the b«k is guided-the i
\ elegance of taste, purity, and good judgment-that we are ttarce prepared to '
\ .S^n/i3 a "T w0k-, £*' GillesPie has gone to work like a tranquil !
j scholar and lover of art, and has toned his book from the second stage of his !
; mpressions rather than the first. His views, of course, are more reliable, and, !
! without further comment on the quality of the book, which is in all respecti !
> admirable, we extract," &c— JV. Y. Evening Mirror. ',
I it 3»' VmV^T a^teable book' ^"e" with an ease and fluency that make i
j it quite delightful. The author states what came under his observation and !
; his impressions with an earnest freedom, which assures the reader that what !
| he is perusing is characterized by truth. Every subject, apparently, ol interest !
has been toached upon, in a manner sufficiently full; and yet the description is i
| marked by a conciseness which gives the work an advantage over many others
S of a similar nature."— JV. Y. Albion. y "l"ers l
Lt,lTearVXCe,edin!ly?leua.se,d.with this b00k> becanse the author is above!
the conventional mode of thinking and describing. He thinks for himself, and
he speaks frankly ; moreover, he is a close observer, and is evidently possessed
| of taste and discrimination." — JV. Y. Anglo-American. i
! ^lT^e w'^/describes and relates with a vivacity which gives his subject,
j trite though It be, an aspect of novelty." — JV. Y. Evening Post. SUUJC"> |
LIFE AND ELOQUENCE OF LARNED.
Life and Eloquence of the Rev. Sylvester Larned, First Pas- j
tor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans. By j
R. R. Gr^iey. 1 thick vol. 12mo., with a fine portrait, j
$1 25. j
Contents. — Preface, Life of Larned, Prayer, Sermons, Christ \
K3 Man, Paul before Felix, Saving Faith, Obligations for Spirit- $
ual Mercies, On Objections against Christianity — the same, part jj
2 — Practical Admonitions, On the Inspiration of the Scriptures, i
On Searching the Scriptures, Religious Education, Duty of Re- ?
conciliation to God, Causes of Distaste for Religion, Sin Incon- j
sistent with Piety, On the Advent, Walking in Wisdom, Enmity \
of the Carnal Mind, Duty to Orphans, Excuses of the Impenitent, <
Christian Self-Examination, The Character of Herod, Character <
of Peter — the same, part 2 — Character of Paul, On the Resurrec- !
tion, Against Profane Swearing, Love of Darkness rather than ;
Light, Cause of Love to God, Divine Law inexorable, Report of j
the Watchman, Hope of the Righteous, Moral Insanity of Man. S
"No minister of the same age has over, at least in this country, left behind j
bim deeper impressions of his eloquence. This volume is worthy of critical <
examination and study ; and those who would combine in their sermons ease i
and elevation, simplicity and energy ; who would leave to their hearers no time j
to sleep, and no wish to be absent, but regret only at the brevity of (he service, <
and delight at the return of the Sabbath, will rind the perusal and re-perusal of >
Mr. Larned's discourses greatly to their advantage." — Knickerbocker. i
u A beautiful and eloquent tribute to sanctified genius. The unity, force, ima- t
gination, harmony, and feeling apparent in these discourses, will commend the ;
volume to all." — Christian Observer.
" A valuable treasure to all who cherish the memory of one of the most pure- >
minded and eloquent clergymen of our country ; or who know how to appre- ?
ciate the finest specimens of pulpit composition." — Tribune. \
«' He was one of the most eloquent orators in the United States. Mr. Guney \
has made a most interesting volume, which will prove an acceptable present to >
the religious public."— Evening Post. >
" A most delightful volume. We heartily commend it to the religious com- j
munity." — JVeio York American. t
" It is much to be wondered at, that no permanent memorial of this dintin ;
guished divine has ever before been given to the world. The volume cannot fail >
to be sought for with great avidity." — Daily Jlmerican Citizen.
« These discourses evidently bear the impress of a great mind— not only of an S
exuberant fancy, but of gigantic powers of comprehension. We indeed rejoice
that the work has at length appeared. i
« Larned was beyond all question the brightest star of the American pulpit, \
during the brief period in which he lived. We are gratified to see a memoir £
of him to worthily constructed, and so rich In interesting material. The sermons >
ar«> pervaded by the living, breathing spirit of true genius, as well as of evan- j
gefical truth and fervent devotion."— Albany Argus.
r
TAPPAN'S ELEMENTS OF LOGIC.
Elements of Logic, together with an introductory view of
Philosophy in general, and a Preliminary View of the
Reason. One thick vol. 12mo. $1 00.
Contents : —
Part 1. — Introductory View of Philosophy in General.
" 2. — Preliminary View of the Reason.
" 3. — Logic Proper — Book I. Primordial Logic. II. In-
ductive Logic. III. Deductive Logic. IV.
Doctrine of Evidence.
" This is an able and learned — the most able and learned work which has
ever appeared on the subject in this country. It is written in a simple, lucid
style, and with a great precision of definition and distinction. We doubt not It
will be appreciated by learned men and teachers, and become the standard work
in its line." — New York Evangelist.
'The subject is presented, on the whole, in a far more original and attractive
form than any treatise with which we are acquainted. The writer's style is
characterized by a peculiar freshness and vivacity, which, together with his
admirable arr»ngement, relieves the subject of that proverbial tedium under the
i imputation of which it has always labored. This work is finely adapted as a
5 Manual for schools and colleges, supplying a desideratum which has long been
i felt to exist. The book we decidedly regard as an honor to the author, and an
5 honor to the country." — New World.
5 " We have not been able to examine this excellent treatise with the attention
5 it merits ; but we think we are safe in saying that it is not only the most original,
\ but the best work on Logic, which has ever appeared in this country." — Journal
S of Commerce.
" On the whole we think this is the best work on Logic which we have seen
from the American press." — Evening Post.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Tappan on The Will. 3 vols. $3 00 ; or separately.
Vol. 1. — Review of Edwards.
" 2. — Appeal to Consciousness.
" 3. — Moral Agency.
BRADFORD'S AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.
American Antiquities, and Researches into the Origin and \
History of the Red Race. By Alexander W. Bradford, j
1 vol. 8vo, $1 00. I
i *** A philosophical and elaborate investigation of a subject which has excited <
5 nuch attention. This able work is a very desirable companion to those of Ste- \
\ pliens and others on the Ruins of Central America. \
HAND-BOOK OF HYDROPATHY.
iHand-Book of Hydropathy ; or a Popular Account of the
Treatment and Prevention of Diseases, by means of Wa-
ter. Chiefly selected from the most eminent and recent
\ European authors, by Joel Shew, M. D. 1 vol. 12mo.
! Second edition. Price 50 cents ; or in paper binding, 38 cts.
5 "This excellent little work of Dr. Shew has been compiled from the best au-
j thors, and contains as complete a view of the practice under the mode as can be
< given." — J\T. Y. Post.
" It is eminently calculated to benefit all who read and study it, whether sick
; or well." — Regenerator.
" This book is well printed, its contents have been judiciously selected from
a variety of sources, and it gives a complete compend of the Treatment by Water
in its present state of improvement. It is universally calculated to do good in
the all-important matter of preventing, as well as curing disease." — JV. Y.
Tribune.
LOCKHART'S SPANISH BALLADS.
Ancient Spanish Ballads, Historical and Romantic, translated,
with notes, by J. G. Lockhart, Esq. To which are added,
an Essay on the Origin, Antiquity, Character, and Influ-
ence of the Ancient Ballads of Spain ; and an Analytical
Account, with Specimens, of the Romance ef the Cid. 1
very neat vol. 8vo., beautifully printed. $1 50.
"These ' Spanish Ballads' are known to our public, but generally with incon-
ceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations of Mr. Lock-
hart." — Hallam.
" This delightful volume needs no commendation of ours ; every one will buy
it, and keep it among their literary treasures." — Edinburgh Review.
» We are quite at a loss to speak in adequate terms of this delightful and in-
teresting volume, the perusal and reperusal of which have afforded us so much
real gratification, — but we advise every one to get it." — Jv*. Y. Tribune.
NEW TABLES OF INTEREST.
Tables of Interest, determining, by means of the Differences
of Logistic Squares, the interest of every whole sum up to
10,000 dollars, for any length of time not exceeding 400
days, at the rates of 6 and 7 per cent. 1 vol. royal 8vo.,
beautifully printed. $1 50.
> "The application of the tables appears to be so direct and p...jn, and the
? method of using them so concise, that we can safely recommend the book as
' worthy of adoption among merchants, bankers, and others." — JV. Y. Commercial
Advertiser.
', "The very slight amount of numerical calculation required in using these
; tables and the uniformity of the process appear to give the work a claim on the
' attention of those whose business requires the frequent computation of interest "
5 — JV. Y. Post.
i "This work seems to answer fully the purpose for which it was prepared,
] in furnishing to the business community a concise and easy method of finding
ihe interest of money." — JV. Y. American.
SHORT AND SIMPLE PRAYERS
WITH
HYMNS FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN.
By the Author of " Mamma's Bible Stories." 1 vol., with
neat engravings. Price 37 cents.
" Prayer is the simplest form of speech
Thai infant lips can try " — Montgomery.
" We do not pretend to remember the many little books similar in design to
this which we may have received, but none that we can recall seems so well
adapted to its purpose. The prayers and hymns are peculiarly simple and
touching. The heart of a child could hardly fail to be moved by them. The
volume is a neat one, very well printed, with two or three pretty illustrations." —
Jtfortk American.
HAPPY HOURS,
OR, THE HOME STORY-BOOK.
c By Mary Cherwell. 1 vol. with neat engravings, handsome'y
printed in large bold type. Second edition. Price 50 cts.
" A sweet little book of home stories, which all young people will be delighted
with."— JV. Y. Tribune.
"We can scarcely commend this little hook enough - the enterprising pub-
lishers are entitled to great praise for the handsome style in which it is pub-
lished."— True Sun.
" A delightful book for children : it is very pleasantly written, and cannot fail
to engage the young reader's attention. The designs are pretty, and neatly ex-
ecuted. We strongly recommend it to all our young friends." — JV. Y. Express.
COURSE OF ENGLISH READING.
j
j A Course of English Reading, adapted to every Taste and
f Capacity, with Anecdotes of Men of Genius. By Rev. J.
! Pycroft. With corrections and additions, by J. G. Cogs-
; well, Esq. 1 vol. 12mo. Price 75 cents.
• " It is rare to meet with a work so well fitted to aid in the acquisition of
i knowledge as this ; indeed, we have never seen any similar directory to an
j English reader, that seemed to us to compare with it, either in respect to its
5 fortunate arrangement or general felicity of execution. We would recommend
S to every young person who intends to give any attention to the culture of his
I mind, to keep this book by him as a constant guide ; and persons of any age oi
< any profession, will find it as a book of reforence quite invaluable."— Albany
) Religious Spectator.
5 "This book is eminently fitted to be both popular and useful. For want of
> some such guide as this, a large part of the reading, particularly of young per-
5 sons, is to little purpose ; and many who deservedly acquire the character of
5 great readers, really acquire very little as the fruit of their reading. The pres-
5 ent work will not only relieve the mind that is doubtful what course of reading
\ to adopt, or that has been unable to find any satisfactory course marked out,
j but it will contribute to arrange and systematize the mind's acquisitions, so
> :h?t they shall be at command whenever they are needed. It will be found
; an admirable work of reference, not only for students in the course of their
i education, but for professional men, and for all who wish to know what the
j greatest and best minds have thought on the most important subjecls." —
) Albany Argus.
I "This work is designed to enable the student to select such works as will
> most rapidly advance his knowledge of any particular branch or subject of
} literature, the arts, &c. It may be profitably consulted by all who desire to
5 have their studies directed by mature judgment and experience." — Baltimore
I American.
I " There is a vast deal of time spent to little purpose by almost every person
> who is given much to reading, from an inability to make a suitable selection of
> books. The present work is designed and admirably adapted to remedy this
t evil, and the course of reading which it marks out, seems to us altogether the
) most judicious that we have ever met with, it not only gives the names of the
{ most distinguished authors in the various departments of learning, but fur-
t nishes hints by which the reader may judge of their compara tive merits. To
' the professional man, as well as to the student, the work will be invaluable."
« — Daily Amer. Citizen.
"> " A volume which we can conscientiously recommend as marking out an
< accurate course of historical and general reading, from which a vast acquisi-
< tion of sound knowledge must result. The arrangements and system are no
< less admirable than the selection of authors pointed eut for study." — Literary
< Gazette.
I "We do not know of a better index than this well-considered little book to
< a general course of reading. It might, as such, be safely and advantageously
< put into the hands of all young persons who have finished their education, and
' are about to take their place in society, or to begin the world." — Atlas.
) -'This course is admirably adapted to promote a really intellectual study of
] history, philosophy, and the belles-lettres, as distinguished from that mere ac-
< cumulation of words and dates in the memory, which passes for education. ' —
\ Critic.
\ "A most admirable and simply-arranged work, fit to be placed in the hands
( of every young man about to enter on a course of English Reading. It may be
profitable, in truth, to every one ; while the lively anecdotes intermixed with
tho subject-matter, rentJer it fell of interest and amusement."— Aristidean.
The Botanical Text Book for Colleges, Schools, and private
Students. Comprising not only the outlines of Structural
and Physiological Botany, but also a popular account of the
principal Natural Orders, their geographical distribution,
properties, and uses, with an enumeration of those plants
which furnish products employed in medicine and the arts.
1 very thick vol. with numerous fine engravings. $1 50.
Contents. — Preliminary Considerations. Part I. Structural
and Physiological Botany. Part II. Systematic Botany. Ap.
pendix, Index, Glossary of Botanical Terms. Index of the Na-
tural Orders, Useful Plants, and Products, &c.
" The most compendious and satisfactory view of the Vegetable Kingdom
which has yet been offered in an elementary treatise. Remarkable for its cor-
rectness and perspicuity." — Silliman's Journal.
See also Loudon, Hooker, and other English Botanical Journals, &c.
NEW SERIES OF THE BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA,
AND
THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.
Conducted by B. B. Edwards and E. A. Park, Professors at
Andover. With the special co-operation of Dr. Robinson
and Professor Stuart. Price $4 00 a year.
"A noble contribution to Religious Literature, and fitly printed."— Tribune.
" Confessedly one of the ablest and most important Theological Reviews pub-
lished in this country."— Courier and Enquirer.
« As an aid to the Biblical Student, this is doubtless the most valuable peri-
odical in the English language. The other religious publications in this coun-
try, admitting a wider range of subjects, cannot concentrate so much strength ]
on the department of Biblical learning. Noae of them therefore can adequately i
Eiipply its place; but the principal recommendation of this work, after all, is its <
elevated and manly tone."— New York Observer. '
"This is, perhaps, the most ambitious journal in the United State*. We use I
the word in a good sense, as meaning that there is no journal among us w *
seems more laudably desirous to take the lead in literary and theological science. 5
Its handsome type and paper give it a pleasing exterior ; its typographical errors, j
are so comparatively few, as to show that it has the advantage of the best ;
American proof-reading; while for thoroughness of execution in the depart- \
WAGSTAFF'S HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS.
A History of the Society of Friends, compiled from its stan-
dard records, and other authentic sources. By W. R.
Wagstaff, M.D. One handsome volume, 8vo. $2 00.
" This seems to us to be a work of decided value and of greatest interest, not
only to professedly theological students, but to all who wish to acquaint them-
selves with the progress of peculiar principles, or the growth of peculiar sects.
In this excellent work he has given very full and very interesting biographical
sketches of all the men who were active in establishing, or who have made
illustrious the character and history of the Society. The work exhibits a close
acquaintance with his subject, and a careful industry in examining authentic
records concerning it, and is written in a style which must attract and reward
attention." — JV. Y. Courier.
"This book is one that was much needed ; and it will do good. The intro-
duction is a very perspicuous history of Christianity prior to the times of
George Fox; and it brings down the history of the Society of Friends in Eng-
land from its origin to the year 1736. The work will prove very attractive and
popular, and we can confidently recommend it to all classes, for they will find
in it the history of persecuted goodness, plainly and charitably told, in all the
simplicity of truth." — Philad. Inquirer.
"It is somewhat singular, that almost every writer belonging to the Society
of Friends is remarkable for verbosity, while the members of the society, in
their oral communications, exhibit great simplicity and brevity of speech. This
fault of their writers necessarily confines their publications to a ' select few,'
by whom patience is esteemed a virtue. Dr. Wagstaff has judiciously depart-
ed from the established rule, and given us valuable historical matter, written
in a readable and pleasant style." — JV. Y. Post.
" This is a most vivid and valuable history of the Society of Friends, com-
piled from its standard records, and other authentic sources, by William R.
Wagstaff, M. D. It contains an Introduction, entitled the Christian Church
prior to George Fox." — New Haven Courier.
"The author has attempted to consolidate the various histories of Friends,
and present them in simple but approved language, divested of quaintness and
circumlocution, and in that he has eminently succeeded. This volume will be
found deeply interesting, not only to the members of the Society of Friends,
but to all readers." — U. S. Gazette.
" The object of the author is to furnish a compendious and modern work, in I
order that the history of the Society may be known without the necessity of {
searching records OD adapted to general reading, either from their quaintness {
or their verbosity of style. To do this he has consulted the standard histo- {
rians and primitive members of the Society, and has produced a work which ;
will no doubt find favor with the public. The present volume commences ;
with the year 1536, and extends to 1736. It is the design of the author to pre- !
pare shortly another volume, containing a full account of the privations en- .'
dured by the Society in America." — Baltimore American.
"The work of Dr. Wagstaff contains the most satisfactory and interesting
exposition of the rise and progress of the Society of Friends, and of the doc-
trines which they hold, that we have ever read. The facts detailed in the
volume before us are derived from the most authentic sources — the standard
historians and primitive members of the Society." — Jour, of Com.
"This work has already attained a vast amount of credit, and seems to be s
rightly valued by those who have tested fairly its merits " — American Re- i
publican. \
HUMAN MAGNETISM.
Human Magnetism ; — Its Claim to Dispassionate Inquiry ;
being an attempt to show the utility of its Application to
the Relief of Human Suffering. By W. Newnham, Esq.
1 vol. 12mo. $1.
Introduction — Magnetism not Satanic Agency — Not Super-
I natural — Mode of reasoning adopted in treating the subject — Gen-
I eral Remarks — On the opposition of medical men generally to the
i doctrines of Magnetism — On the applicability of Magnetism to the
s relief of Medical and Surgical Disease — On the Qualifications of
Magnetizers — History of the conduct of the Royal Academy of
\ Medicine towards Animal Magnetism, and consideration of the
\ question how far the power of Imagination may be allowed to be
• a sufficient cause of its phenomena — Sketch of Chardel's Views —
\ Thoughts on Energia — On Somnambulism and Clairvoyance — On
\ Prevision — On Phreno-Magnetism — On Extase — Appendix.
> "This is a work resulting from deep investigation, by one who brings to the
| subject a mind well disciplined, and a fondness for the pursuit; and in a time
} when so much inquiry is going on, and so much deception practised with
reference to human magnetism, such a work will be found useful and instruc-
; tive."— V. S. Gazette.
" This is a work of vast importance and high merit." — Broadway Journal.
" It is a very valuable work, and ought to be perused by everybody." — JV. Y.
Mirror.
" The learned author enters upon the investigation of his subject apparently
! after full preparation. Without propounding any general theory of magnetism,
he contends that it does not contravene any law of nature, and that its phe-
! nomena exhibit no distinctive characteristic which has not been shown to
! exist in nature, in some form or other. They may not be all found associated
in any one patient ; but they have been marked and recorded in the annals of
! medical literature. Altogether, it is a most valuable work." — Newark Adver-
\\ User.
| " A hasty glance through the volume convinces us that the author under-
I stands his theme, has collected numerous remarkable facts, and has grappled
( with some of the strongest objections urged by the opponents of the doctrine."
— JV. Y. Post.
i " The subject of animal magnetism has excited so much attention within the
? last few years, that any work in relation to it, from an intelligent source, can
I hardly fail to gain an extensive circulation. The present work is evidently
? from a very competent hand, and is the result of great reflection and observa-
l tion ; and we doubt not that it contains nearly every thing of importance that
l is known on the subject to which it relates. We think it hardly possible that
? any candid person should weigh the statements and reasonings which this
| book contains, without coming to the conclusion, that there is at least that in
5 animal magnetism which should save it from being cast away without ex-
( amination." — Albany Argus.
J " The well-attested facts which have recently been made known both in
I England and America, in relation to the performance of surgical operations
. with the aid of Mesmerism, will doubtless cause this book to be sought after,
! inasmuch as many consider the subject involved in mystery, and are desirous
! of investigating it. Mr. Newnham's work professes to examine the whole
( matter philosophically, and it appears to be quite a desideratum at the present
] time." — Baltimore American.
VESTIGES OP THE CREATION. }
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. By Sir Richard :
Vyvyan, Bart., M. P., F. R. S., &c. One vol. 12mo. well j
printed. Price 75 cents.
Contents. — 1. The bodies of space, their arrangements and i
; formation — 2. Constituent materials of the earth and other bodies
| of space — 3. The earth formed ; era of the primary rocks — 4. Com- !
j mencement of organic life ; sea plants, corals, &c. — 5. Era of the j
; old red sand-stone ; terrestrial zoology commences with reptiles ; !
first traces of birds — 5. Era of the oolite ; commencement of mam- i
j malia — 6. Era of the cretaceous formations — 7. Era of the ter- ;
; tiary formation ; mammalia abundant — 8. Era of the superficial j
formations; commencement of the present speeies — 9. General:
: censiderations respecting the origin of the animated tribes — 10. ;
Particular considerations respecting the origin of the animated !
tribes — 11. Hypothesis of the development of the vegetable and:
; animal kingdom — 12. Maclay system of animated nature ; this •
; system considered in connexion with the progress of organic crea-
: tion, and as indicating the natural status of man — 13. Early his-
jtoryof mankind — 14. Mental constitution of animals — 15. Pur-
I pose and general condition of the animated creation — 16. Note j
i conclusory.
' This is a remarkable volume — small In compass — but embracing a wide I
I range of inquiry, from worlds beyond the visible starry firmament, to the !
I minutest structures of man and animals. The work i» written with peculiar j
! and classical terseness, reminding us very much of the style of Celsus !
! We have dedicated a large space to this remarkable work, that may induce I
' many of our readers to peruse the original. The author is, decidedly, a man i
' of great information and reflection." — Medico-Chirurgical Review.
" This is a very beautiful and a very interesting book. Its theme is one of
! the grandest that can occupy human thought — no less than the creation of the <
i universe. It is full of interest and grandeur, and must claim our readers' '
I special notice, as possessing, in an eminent degree, matter for their contempla-
' tion, which cannot fail at once to elevate, to gratify, and enrich their minds."
> — Forbes' Review.
" A neat little volume of much interest. Judging from a brief glance at the
contents of the volume, the author has produced a work of great interest, and
one which, while it affords the reader useful Instruction, cannot fail to tuna
his mind to a very profitable channel of reflection." — Commer. Adv.
" A small but remarkable work. It is a bold attempt to connect the natural
sciences into a history of creation. It contains much to interest and instruct,
and the book is ingenious, logical, and learned." — Newark Adv.
"This work discovers great ingenuity and great research into the mysteries
of nature. It is a noble work, and one which no intelligent person can read
without finding a fresh impulse communicated to his thoughts, and gaining
some higher impressions of the Creator's power, wisdom, and goodness."—
Albany Argus.
" A novel and remarkable work, which will speedily attract the attention of
all inquisitive readers. There is much that is new and ingenious in the book.
The author, whoever he is, is a man of varied philosophical and literary at-
tainments, and master of a style in conveying his thoughts, so ptire, simple,
and modest, that his treatise will be everywhere widely read."— JV. Y. Mtrn-
ing ffew$.
DANA'S MINERALOGY.
| A System of Minerabgy ; Comprising the most recent dis-
5 coveries, with numerous engravings. Second edition,
j enlarged and improved. By James D. Dana, A. M.
Very thick vol. 8vo., pp. G33. $3 50.
\ Contexts. — Introduction. Tart I. Crystallogony, or the
/ Science of the Structure of Minerals. II. Physical Properties
\ of Minerals. III. Chemical Properties of Minerals. IV. Taxo-
\ nomy. V. Determinative Mineralogy. VI. Descriptive Minera-
* logy. VII. Chemical Classification. VIII. Rocks on Mineral
> Aggregates. IX. Mineralogical Bibliography. X. Copious Index.
S "Tt gives me great pleasure to state that it requires but few works like the
I present, to give American Science a name which win merit, if it does not re-
i ceive, the respect of the scientific world." — Silliman's Journal for April.
"This work does great honor to America, and should make us blush for the
neglect in England of an important and interesting science. It is a thick octavo,
of about 700 pages, on Mineralogy, treated in a highly scientific and perspicuous
manner. It is no compilation, such as afl works on this subject have been in
this country since the writings of Jameson and Phillips, but an original survey
of the mineral kingdom executed with the greatest care. This, too, is the second
edition, greatly enlarged, showing that Mr. Dana's labors are appreciated in
America." — London MheniBum.
" This work bears marks on every page of great industry and determination
in collecting the most recent facts. In completeness, systematic arrangement,
and accuracy, it is believed to be exceeded by no other work extant." — JV. Y.
American.
"This it a new edition of the best treatise ever published in this country on \
the interesting and important subject of Mineralogy. It first appeared seven 5
years ago, since which time many new discoveries have been made in the \
science, and sources have thus been opened for a vast amount of new and im- 5
portant matter. All the investigations, both Foreign and American, that hate »
been made, have been carefully consulted in the preparation of this new edition,
and a chapter on crystallography has been added. The work is a most welcome
addition to the series of American standard treatises on scientific subjects." — JV.
Y. Courier and Enquirer.
"This is a truly valuable and learned work, and it is surprising, considering \
the correctness of this treatise on its first appearance, to find how numerous and \
important are the changes which have been made in the present edition. We /
are sure the work must command success." — Tribune. \
\ HAND-BOOK OF NEEDLEWORK.
* The Hand-Book of Needle Work. By Miss Lambert. 1
| vol. 8vo., beautifully printed, with numerous illustrations.
\ Price $1 50 ; oi in extra binding, neat fancy style, $3 00 j
i rhit very elegant and useful volume proves to be the most attractive work \
< of the kind ever published in this country. It contains practical instructions in <
< the various kinds of Ornamental Needlework and Embroidery, with a historical >
! account of these accomplishments in all ages and nations. To use a common j
\ phrase, it certainly deserves a place on every lady's work table, besides being an i
ornament to the drawing-room. £
X
(p . ..
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